Citizenship and Sentencing: Assessing Intersectionality in National Origin and Legal Migration Status on Federal Sentencing Outcomes

Published date01 March 2022
Date01 March 2022
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1177/00224278211023980
Subject MatterArticles
Original Research Article
Citizenship and
Sentencing: Assessing
Intersectionality in
National Origin and
Legal Migration Status
on Federal Sentencing
Outcomes
Doyun Koo
1
, Ben Feldmeyer
1
,
and Bryan Holmes
1
Abstract
Objectives: This study seeks to understand how national origi n and legal
migration status of noncitizen defendants in federal criminal courts shape
incarceration and sentence length decisions. Method: The authors use
annual United States Sentencing Commission (USSC) Monitoring of Federal
Criminal Sentences (MFCS) datasets (2011–2016) to examine the impact of
defendant’s (1) national origin and (2) legal versus illegal migration status on
incarceration and sentence length decisions in federal criminal courts. In
addition, in order to account for effects of immigration cases, supplemental
analyses are conducted for (1) non-immigration offenses and (2)
immigration-only offenses. Results: For the incarceration decision,
1
School of Criminal Justice, University of Cincinnati, OH, USA
Corresponding Author:
Doyun Koo, School of Criminal Justice, University of Cincinnati, 2610 McMicken Circle (TDC
560), Cincinnati, OH 45221, USA.
Email: koodn@ucmail.uc.edu
Journal of Research in Crime and
Delinquency
ªThe Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/00224278211023980
journals.sagepub.com/home/jrc
2022, Vol. 59(2) 203–239
noncitizen defendants have higher odds of incarceration than U.S. citizens,
net of other factors. These effects are less consistent in the sentence length
decision. These relationships systemically differ across national origin and
legal migration status. Conclusions: Punishment disadvantages based on one’s
citizenship are particularly pronounced for defendants from Mexico, Latin
America, and Africa and especially for those with “illegal” migration status.
As noncitizen populations continue to grow in federal courts and in the U.S.
more broadly, understanding and addressing these citizenship disparities in
punishment will be increasingly important.
Keywords
courts, sentencing, nationality, immigration, citizenship, race, ethnicity
Criminologists have had a longstanding interest in identifying the ways in
which demographic characteristics shape punishment throughout the crim-
inal justice system. Within the sentencing literature, researchers have
focused on how a defendant’s extralegal characteristics, such as race/
ethnicity, gender, and age, influence va rious sentencing outcomes. This
body of research has consistently found that racial/ethnic minorities and
male defendants receive harsher sentencing outcomes (i.e., incarceration,
sentence length, departures) than similarly-situate d Whites and females,
respectively (Demuth and Steffensmeier 2004; Spohn 2000; Steffensmeier,
Kramer, and Ulmer 1995; Ulmer and Kramer 1996). Furthermore, research
suggests that these extralegal factors intersect in ways that aggravate, or
enhance, the impact of race/ethnicity and gender (i.e., for Black males and
Hispanic males, Doerner and Demuth 2010; Spohn 2000). Thus, despite the
explicit goals of federal and state sentencing reforms to eliminate unwar-
ranted disparities in sentencing (Kramer and Ulmer 1996; United States
Sentencing Commission (USSC) 2004), research clearly indicates that dis-
parities based on extralegal factors persist.
What is less clear is whether (and how) citizenship status influences punish-
ment within the federal criminal court system, and relatedly, the degree to
which these effects are shaped by defendant national origin and “legal” migra-
tion status. This is a pressing issue given that noncitizen populations have
rapidly grown to include more than 44 million residents and account for nearly
one out of every seven people in the United States (Lopez 2019). Likewise, the
share of noncitizens in the federal criminal court system has grown over time,
accounting for over 40 percent of the federal caseload in 2016 (USSC 2016).
204 Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 59(2)
Notably, a growing body of a literature has begun to examine how
defendant citizenship status influences sentencing outcomes (Everett and
Wojtkeiwicz 2002; Hartley and Armendariz 2011; Kautt and Spohn 2002;
Light, Massoglia, and King 2014; Wu and Deleon 2012). These studies
typically rely on either focal concerns (Steffensmeier, Ulmer, and Kramer
1998) or group threat theories (Blalock, 1967; Blumer, 1958) to explain
why citizenship status may work as an aggravating factor at sentencing.
Specifically, these perspectives suggest that non-U.S. citizenship may serve
as a signal of defendant dangerousness, culpability, or practical concerns
(e.g., flight risk or deportation proceedings) or may trigger perceptions of
group threat among courtroom actors in much the same way that racial/
ethnic minority status does (Wolfe, Pyrooz, and Spohn 2011).
Despite the growing attention to citizenship effects on sentencing, sev-
eral key gaps and questions remain in this line of research. Notably, empiri-
cal research on the topic to date has produced mixed findings. On the one
hand, some studies find that noncitiz en defendants receive harsher sen -
tences (especially for the inc arceration decision) than s imilarly-situated
U.S. citizens (Demuth 2002; Hartley and Armendariz 2011; Light et al.
2014). On the other hand, other studies find that noncitizen defendants
(even those with illegal status) may actually receive less severe sentences
than U.S. citizens, net of other factors (Wolfe et al. 2011; Wu and DeLone
2012).
Along with these mixed findings, research on citizenship and sentencing
has often been limited to general comparisons of U.S. citizens versus non-
citizens (Light 2014, Wolfe et al. 2011), with less attention given to whether
citizenship effects differ by (1) national origin and (2) legal versus illegal
migration status (and combinations of these categories). This oversight is
particularly noteworthy given that the “noncitizen” category includes a
wide variety of nationality groups (e.g., Mexican, South American, Asian,
Western European, etc.), which have unique cultures and histories of migra-
tion. In addition, these groups have received dramatically different
responses from the U.S. public and the criminal justice system. For exam-
ple, public sentiment and crime-related fears of Mexican or Latin American
migrants have been more negative than perceptions of Asian or Western
European migrants (Logue 2009; Orrick and Piquero 2015). Likewise, the
U.S. public has often perceived “illegal” or undocumented migrants as more
crime-prone and threatening than “legal” migrants (Coutin 2005). Thus, as
we discuss in the following sections, there are reasons to suspect that
noncitizen effects on sentencing may depend greatly on defendant nation-
ality, legal migration status, and the intersection between these categories
205
Koo et al.

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