County-Level Context and Sentence Lengths for Black, Latinx, and White Individuals Sentenced to Prison: A Multi-Level Assessment

• Published date: 01 December 2021
• Date: 01 December 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/08874034211021893
• Author: Katherine A. Durante
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/08874034211021893

Criminal Justice Policy Review

2021, Vol. 32(9) 915 –937

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/08874034211021893

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Article

County-Level Context and

Sentence Lengths for Black,

Latinx, and White Individuals

Sentenced to Prison:

A Multi-Level Assessment

Katherine A. Durante1

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between race, ethnicity, county-level contextual

variables, and sentence lengths for Black, Latinx, and White individuals sentenced

to prison. Hierarchical linear modeling is used to examine the focal concerns

perspective, the racial/ethnic threat thesis, socioeconomic inequality across racial/

ethnic groups, political climate, and individual-level factors and sentence lengths.

Data come from the National Corrections Reporting Program and other sources

to examine sentences for over 500,000 individuals admitted to U.S. prisons between

2015 and 2017, from 751 counties. Results indicate that Black and Latinx individuals

receive longer sentences than their White counterparts, even after controlling for

relevant variables. The racial/ethnic threat thesis is not supported. Black individuals

are sentenced longer than their White counterparts in counties with larger shares

of Republican voters. Findings indicate that race and ethnicity continue to be salient

predictors of punishment, with Black and Latinx individuals facing harsher outcomes

than their White counterparts.

Keywords

punishment, focal concerns, racial disparity, racial threat, sentence length

People of color, especially Black individuals, face disparate imprisonment across the

United States.1 Yet sentencing outcomes vary geographically. For example, in

Pennsylvania, Black and Latinx individuals are imprisoned at 8.9 and 3.3 times the

1Nevada State College, Henderson, USA

Corresponding Author:

Katherine A. Durante, Department of Social Sciences, Nevada State College, 1300 Nevada State Drive,

Henderson, NV 89002, USA.

Email: Katherine.Durante@nsc.edu

1021893CJPXXX10.1177/08874034211021893Criminal Justice Policy ReviewDurante

research-article2021

916 Criminal Justice Policy Review 32(9)

rate of Whites, respectively, which is considerably higher than the state prison average

disparity ratios of 5.1 and 1.4 (Nellis, 2016). Still, Latinx persons are estimated to be

incarcerated at lower rates than Whites in at least nineteen states (Nellis, 2016), which

demonstrates the complex relationship between race, ethnicity, location, and punish-

ment. The wide variation in sentencing disparities underlines the importance of study-

ing the relationship between jurisdictional context and punishment. In this study, a

variety of county-level predictors are examined across diverse jurisdictions to increase

our understanding of macro-level contextual factors associated with increased sen-

tence lengths for Black and Latinx individuals sentenced to prison.

A wealth of scholarship examines sentence length disparity across racial and ethnic

groups, and how race and/or ethnicity might interact with sex, age, and legally relevant

variables such as offense type and prior felony convictions (see Baumer, 2013; Spohn,

2000 for summary). Overall, findings suggest that punishment is not race neutral.

However, not all studies have found a disparity in sentence length, suggesting that

context matters. For example, Spohn (2000) surveyed the research on sentence length

and determined that 15 out of 48 studies found significant direct effects of race and/or

ethnicity, but that results varied based on the sample examined (p. 456). More recently,

Franklin (2020) notes that the best evidence shows that Black and Latinx individuals

convicted of crimes are punished more severely than their White counterparts, but

only under certain conditions. Thus, scholarly inquiry should move away from “if”

racial disparity in punishment exists, toward increasing our understanding of what

circumstances or contexts may lead to racial disparity.

In recent years, much of the research on race and sentence length has focused on

people incarcerated in federal prisons (Brennan & Spohn, 2009; Doerner & Demuth,

2010; Feldmeyer & Ulmer, 2011; Franklin, 2015; Nowacki, 2015, 2017; Ward et al.,

2016), despite the fact that 87%2 of people incarcerated are in state prisons. Research

has also focused on racial and ethnic differences in sentence length specifically for

people convicted of drug offenses (Brennan & Spohn, 2009; Helms & Constanza,

2010; Omori, 2017; Spohn, 2013; Spohn & Sample, 2013; Stringer & Holland, 2016;

Ward et al., 2016), in response to the stark reality that Black people are admitted to

U.S. prisons for drug offenses at more than 10 times the rate of White people (Beatty

et al., 2007).

What is missing are studies that examine a variety of contextual factors—includ-

ing racial/ethnic threat, socioeconomic inequality across racial/ethnic groups, politi-

cal climate, and other characteristics often associated with punitive criminal justice

outcomes—across interstate county jurisdictions. With the exception of scholarship

that tests racial/ethnic threat (Feldmeyer et al., 2015; Feldmeyer & Ulmer, 2011;

Wang & Mears, 2015), and a handful of studies of Pennsylvania and California

(Chen, 2013; Johnson, 2006; Ulmer & Johnson, 2004), the context has been largely

limited in the research on sentence length. The research done on the relationship

between contextual characteristics and sentence length has generally focused on

jurisdictions within a single state (Arazan et al., 2019; Chen, 2013; Feldmeyer et al.,

2015; Johnson, 2006; Ulmer & Johnson, 2004; Wooldredge, 2007) or has analyzed

state context (Stringer & Holland, 2016; Wang et al., 2013) or neighborhood context