Sentencing scorecards: Reducing racial disparities in prison sentences at their source

• Author: Shawn D. Bushway,Ruth A. Moyer,Greg Ridgeway
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12529
• Date: 01 November 2020
• Published date: 01 November 2020

DOI: ./- .

SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE

TACKLING DISPARITY IN THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

Sentencing scorecards: Reducing racial

disparities in prison sentences at their source

Greg Ridgeway1Ruth A. Moyer2Shawn D. Bushway3,4

Departments of Criminology and

Statistics, University of Pennsylvania,

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

Department of Criminology, University

of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia,

Pennsylvania, USA

RAND Corporation, Pittsburgh,

Pennsylvania, USA

Department of Public Administration

and Policy, University at Albany, Albany,

New York,USA

Correspondence

GregRidgeway, Departments of Criminol-

ogyand Statistics, University of Pennsylva-

nia,Philadelphia, PA, USA.

Email:gridge@sas.upenn.edu

Theauthors greatly appreciated the advice,

guidance,and investment of time of Martin

Horn,then- executivedirector of the Com-

mission,and Scott Fein, the commissioner

whochaired the subcommittee charged

withconducting an analysis of county level

racialdisparities. We also appreciated the

assistanceofLeslieKellam,thedirectorof

researchfor DCJS, who helped us navigate

theDCJS datasets and whose expertise was

indispensible.The data were provided by

theNew York State Division of Criminal

JusticeServices (DCJS). The opinions,

findings, and conclusions expressedin this

publicationare those of the authors and

notthose of DCJS. Neither New York State

norDCJS assumes liability for its contents

oruse thereof.

Research Summary: Scorecards have become an

increasingly common tool for public policy decision

making about important issues in education, finance,

and health care. Few scorecards have been applied

in criminal justice and none has been developed to

highlight racial disparities in incarceration. We con-

structed county-level scorecards for racial disparities

in incarceration rates for the New York State Perma-

nent Commission on Sentencing. Using detailed data

on felony cases in New York State between  and

, including the specific penal law criminal offense,

features of the underlying charges, and criminal his-

tory, we assembled a set of White defendants within

each county that collectively resembled Black and

Hispanic defendants in that county. Statewide, Black

defendants were more likely to receive prison sentences

than similar White defendants (% vs. %). Some

individual counties had much greater racial disparities

with relative risks of prison as high as .. We found

similar results for Hispanic defendants.

Policy Implications: Early institutional support for

our scorecard receded once racial disparities were

flagged in specific, named counties. The scorecard

was never deployed by the Commission. Commission

members and the research team met with individual

counties but the Commission was disbanded during this

process. New York State still lacks a formal sentencing

commission. We recommend future scorecard efforts

Criminology & Public Policy. ;:–. ©  American Society of Criminology 1113wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/capp

1114 RIDGEWAY  .

come from legislative or executive mandates, requiring

rigorous methods and public presentations.

KEYWORDS

criminal justice, racial disparities, sentencing, performance mea-

surement, benchmarking

1 INTRODUCTION

In public policy,a scorecard reports quantitative performance measures for various policy options

or various providers of public services for the purposes of comparison and service improvement.

Scorecards have become an important, empirically based intervention to promote good gover-

nance. In Texas, the Center for Public Policy Priorities produces the Texas Education Scorecard

to evaluate county-level performance of the education system (Center for Public Policy Priorities,

). It aims to flag counties with high rates of “leaks in the education pipeline” such as students

not meeting grade-level standards, dropping out, or opting not to go to college. Children Now

() produces the California County Scorecard of Children’sWell-Being that provides a county-

by-county assessment of children’s health outcomes that include prenatal care, immunizations,

and health insurance coverage. Using data from eight states, Measures for Justice ()produces

county-level information that contrasts counties on criminal justice system measures such as their

use of bail, speed of adjudication, imposition of court fines and fees, and sentence lengths. This

type of comparison was a regular feature of New Yorkstate practice in the criminal justice system.

The purpose of scorecards is to identify local systems in need of improvement. Scorecards gen-

erate reputational concern for local government actors by focusing on issues that are () sensitive

for the government, () garner substantial exposure through public release and media attention,

and () force governments to prioritize the issues measured in the scorecard (Kelley, ). An

informed public can then make choices about where to raise their families, seek medical care,

send their children to school, and, during election time, vote for the candidates or proposals that

merit their support.

A critical caveat to most scorecardmethodologies is that they do not make casemix adjustments.

That is, most scorecards report unadjusted performance measures. Unadjusted percentages may

make sense for some performance measures, such as Measures for Justice’s “percentage of mis-

demeanor cases resolved within  days.” However,there may be legitimate explanations for why

a county might have an unusually large felony incarceration rate on an unadjusted performance

or outcome scorecard compared to other counties in the state. The county in question may have

an elevated rate of felonies involving firearms or defendants with moreviolent criminal histories.

County leaders can dismiss the scorecard since they can claim, quite correctly,that the scorecard

is not customized for their unique set of cases.

Over a -year period, the authors worked closely with the New York State Permanent Com-

mission on Sentencing to create a scorecard approach that overcomes this challenge. One

co-author, Bushway, was a member of the Commission, and the other two authors were unpaid

consultants who agreed to work with the Commission to create the scorecard. In this paper,

we present the scorecard created for the Commission. Specifically, we construct a scorecard on

racial disparities in incarceration sentences for county criminal justice systems that cannot be