Evolution of Sentencing Research

• Date: 01 May 2015
• Published date: 01 May 2015
• Author: Cassia Spohn
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12125

POLICY ESSAY

DISADVANTAGE AND SENTENCING

OF BLACK DEFENDANTS

Evolution of Sentencing Research

Cassia Spohn

Arizona State University

Social scientists and legal scholars have been engaged in research examining

the complex and multifaceted relationship between race and sentencing for more

than eight decades. During this time period, the questions asked have become

more theoretically sophisticated and the methodologies used to answer those questions

more analytically rigorous. The answers to questions regarding the effect of race on sentence

severity also have changed over time.

Studies conducted from the 1930s through the 1960s often concluded that racial dis-

parities in sentencing reflected racial discrimination and that “equality before the law is a

social fiction”(Sellin, 1935: 217). Reviews of these early studies (Hagan, 1974; Kleck, 1981),

however, found that most of the methodologies were flawed. Many employed inadequate

or no controls for crime seriousness and prior criminal record, and most used inappropriate

statistical techniques to isolate the effect of race. These methodological problems persisted

in research conducted during the 1970s and early 1980s, leading the National Research

Council’s Panel on Sentencing Research to claim in its 1983 report that the sentencing pro-

cess, although not racially neutral, was not characterized by systematic and widespread racial

discrimination (Blumstein, Cohen, Martin, and Tonry, 1983). The panel also concluded

that the disproportionate number of Black males locked up in U.S. prisons was primarily a

result of factors other than racial discrimination in sentencing.

Reviews of research conducted from the mid-1980s through the 1990s reached a

somewhat different conclusion (Chiricos and Crawford, 1995; Mitchell, 2005; Spohn,

2000). The authors of these reviews challenged the no-discrimination thesis and suggested

that racial disparities in sentencing had not declined or disappeared but had become more

subtle and difficult to detect. They contended that testing only for direct race effects

was insufficient and asserted that disentangling the effects of race and other predictors of

sentence severity required tests for indirect race effects and the use of interactive, as well as

Direct correspondence to Cassia Spohn, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Arizona State University,

411 N. Central Ave., Ste. 600, Phoenix, AZ 85004 (e-mail: Cassia.Spohn@asu.edu).

DOI:10.1111/1745-9133.12125 C2015 American Society of Criminology 225

Criminology & Public Policy rVolume 14 rIssue 2