Overview of: “Racial disparity in the wake of the Booker/Fanfan decision

• Author: John H. Kramer,Michael T. Light,Jeffery T. Ulmer
• Published date: 01 November 2011
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-9133.2011.00760.x
• Date: 01 November 2011

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

RACIAL DISPARITY IN WAKE OF THE

BOOKER/FANFAN DECISION

Overview of: “Racial disparity in the wake

of the Booker/Fanfan decision

An alternative analysis to the USSC’s 2010 report”

Jeery T.Ulmer

Michael T.Light

John H. Kramer

The Pennsylvania State University

Research Summary

The U.S. Sentencing Commission (USSC) released a report in March 2010 concluding

that disparity in federal sentencing has increased in the wake of the U.S. SupremeCourt

decisions in United Statesv. Booker (2005) and Gall v. UnitedStates (2007). In light

of this USSC report, we provide an alternative set of analyses that we believe provides

a more complete and informative picture of racial, ethnic, and gender disparity in

federal sentencing outcomes post-Booker and Gall. We attempt first to replicate the

USSC’s models. Then, making different modeling assumptions, we present alternative

models of sentencing outcomes across four time periods spanning fiscal years (FY) 2000

to 2009. We find that post-Booker/Gall:

1. Race/ethnic/gender disparity in sentence length decisions is generally comparable

with pre-2003 levels;

2. African American males’ odds of imprisonment have increased significantly

post-Gall;

3. Immigration cases account for a significant proportion of sentence length disparity

affecting Black males;

4. “Government-sponsored” below Federal Sentencing Guidelines sentences are a

greater source of racial disparities than judge-initiated deviations.

Finally, because much of the debate surrounding the Booker decision involves

questions of whether the guidelines must be mandatory to be effective, we also

present analyses of federal sentencing disparities prior to the 1996 Koon v.

DOI:10.1111/j.1745-9133.2011.00760.x C2011 American Society of Criminology 1073

Criminology & Public Policy rVolume 10 rIssue 4