Financial Dependents and Sentencing Outcomes in Federal District Courts: Variation by Race, Ethnicity, and Sex

• DOI: 10.1177/0887403420943933
• Published date: 01 July 2021
• Date: 01 July 2021
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0887403420943933

Criminal Justice Policy Review

2021, Vol. 32(6) 646 –672

© The Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/0887403420943933

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Article

Financial Dependents and

Sentencing Outcomes in

Federal District Courts:

Variation by Race, Ethnicity,

and Sex

Alexander Testa1 and Richard D. Hartley1

Abstract

A voluminous literature has detailed disparities in punishment related to extra-legal

characteristics such as race, ethnicity, and sex. However, less research has investigated

the specific contexts and conditions under which disparities in punishment emerge.

Specifically, limited research to date has examined whether family characteristics

influence sentencing both directly, and in interaction with race, ethnicity, and sex.

The current study investigates this question using data on federal criminal sentences

from the United States Sentencing Commission for fiscal years 2015–2017. Findings

demonstrate that providing support for dependents generally has a positive

association with the likelihood of being incarcerated and overall sentence length.

Moreover, the positive association between support for dependents and punishment

severity is concentrated among Black male and Hispanic male defendants. Among

minority females and White defendants, having dependents has either a negative or

null association with sentencing outcomes. Findings are discussed in the context of

contemporary theoretical perspectives of punishment.

Keywords

sentencing, punishment, sentencing disparity, dependents, family

1University of Texas at San Antonio, USA

Corresponding Author:

Alexander Testa, Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice, University of Texas at San Antonio, 501

W. Cesar E Chavez Blvd. San Antonio, TX 78207, USA.

Email: alexander.testa@utsa.edu

943933CJPXXX10.1177/0887403420943933Criminal Justice Policy ReviewTesta and Hartley

research-article2020

Testa and Hartley 647

Introduction

Research about disparities in punishment has been a fundamental aspect of socio-legal

scholarship for decades (Baumer, 2013; Mitchell, 2005; Ulmer, 2012). While exten-

sive scholarly attention to this topic has resulted in a substantial increase in knowledge

regarding the ways extra-legal characteristics such as race, ethnicity, and sex shape

punishment decisions, there has been substantially less focus on whether disparities

are conditional on other extra-legal characteristics. Indeed, only a few studies have

considered if factors such as citizenship (Demuth, 2002; Light et al., 2014; Tillyer &

Hartley, 2016; Valadez & Wang, 2017; Wolfe et al., 2011) or education (Franklin,

2017) condition the influence of race and ethnicity on sentencing outcomes.

One noteworthy factor that has gone overlooked is the role of a defendant’s finan-

cial support for family members in the sentencing process. Most research about sen-

tencing outcomes in federal proceedings often includes a measure of providing

financial support for dependents as a control variable (Feldmeyer & Ulmer, 2011;

Freeborn & Hartmann, 2010; Johnson & Betsinger, 2009; Kim et al., 2018; Mustard,

2001; Tillyer et al., 2015; Ulmer et al., 2010; Ulmer & Johnson, 2017). Yet, there has

been little research about whether support for financial dependents intersects with the

sex or race/ethnicity of a defendant to affect criminal punishment (Bickle & Peterson,

1991; Farrell, 2004; Ortiz & Spohn, 2014; Stacey & Spohn, 2006). The limited atten-

tion to this topic is surprising as theories of judicial decision-making suggest that a

criminal sentence might in part by influenced by “the disruption of ties to children and

other family members” (D. Steffensmeier et al., 1998, p. 767). Furthermore, percep-

tions of family status might also be influenced by demographic characteristics of a

defendant. For instance, sentencing decisions might vary based on the sex of a defen-

dant due to the “the differing social costs arising from separating them [women] from

their families” (Daly, 1987b, p. 287). Likewise, because of implicit biases, judges

might be influenced by racial stereotypes pertaining to both criminal offending and

family composition (Livingston, 2015; Ruggles, 1994; Wilson, 2009), that view

minority males as involved in crime as being particularly irresponsible or absent care-

givers (Daly, 1989). Furthermore, drawing on judicial attributions of minority criminal

defendants as being particularly blameworthy and posing a danger to others (D.

Steffensmeier et al., 1998, 2017), judges might potentially perceive Black and Hispanic

caregivers as posing a greater physical, financial, or emotional threat to their family

(Harrison & Willis Esqueda, 2001; Vasquez-Tokos & Norton-Smith, 2017).

Research about the ways race and family status characteristics shapes punishment

decisions also holds implications for understanding how the consequences of criminal

justice contact affect families. The rise of incarceration in the United States has cor-

responded with a considerable increase in the number of individuals with a family

member incarcerated, with especially high rates of incarceration concentrated among

Black and Hispanic families (Enns et al., 2019; Wakefield & Wildeman, 2014). Thus,

assessing racial and ethnic disparities related to punishment of those with financial

dependents is an important topic of inquiry, as evidence of harsher punishments for

minority defendants with dependents relative to similarly situated Whites might be an