Judicial discretion in federal sentencing

• Author: Celesta A. Albonetti
• Published date: 01 November 2011
• Date: 01 November 2011
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-9133.2011.00772.x

POLICY ESSAY

RACIAL DISPARITY IN WAKE OF THE

BOOKER/FANFA N DECISION

Judicial discretion in federal sentencing

An intersection of policy priorities and law

Celesta A. Albonetti

University of Iowa

Questions about who has authority to make which decisions with how much

discretion has occupied the attention of organizational sociologists for years. As

applied to the criminal legal system, the focus is on judicial and prosecutorial

discretion. After decades of allowing judges extensive discretion within broadly

defined statutory limits, coupled with unreviewable sentence outcomes in both federal and

state courts, critics in the early 1970s and 1980s argued for limitations on judicial discretion

(Frankel, 1972). Critics argued that judicial discretion produced uncertainty and disparity

in sentence severity.

Some social scientists found that that federal sentence disparity prior to reforms of

the 1980s was linked to extralegal variables such as the defendant’s race/ethnicity, gender,

and socioeconomic status (Albonetti, 1998, 1999; Hagan, Nagel, and Albonetti, 1982;

Nagel and Hagan, 1982; Peterson and Hagan, 1984; Weisburd, Wheeler, Waring, and

Bode, 1991; Wheeler, Weisburd, and Bode, 1982). Other researchers found no significant

relationship between defendant’s socioeconomic status and sentence severity (Benson and

Walker, 1988).

Federal Reform Measures

After years of policy debate, in the mid-1980s, the U.S. Congress enacted laws that virtually

transformed sentencing practices. Policy priorities were aimed at severely limiting judicial

discretion in an attempt to eliminate unwarranted sentence disparity.How much discretion

should judges’ exercise at sentencing? Should limits be placed on that discretion? What

reform mechanisms could be instituted that would limit judicial discretion effectively?

Should judicial discretion be formally overseen? Who is to perform this oversight?

Direct correspondence to Celesta A. Albonetti, Department of Sociology, University of Iowa, W140 Seashore

Hall West, Iowa City, IA 52242-1401 (e-mail: celesta-albonetti@uiowa.edu).

DOI:10.1111/j.1745-9133.2011.00772.x C2011 American Society of Criminology 1151

Criminology & Public Policy rVolume 10 rIssue 4