The Offense-Specific Nature of Gender and Familial Responsibility in United States Federal Sentencing, 2010–2016

• Published date: 01 May 2022
• Date: 01 May 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/08874034211021899
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/08874034211021899

Criminal Justice Policy Review

2022, Vol. 33(4) 399 –428

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/08874034211021899

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Article

The Offense-Specific

Nature of Gender and

Familial Responsibility

in United States Federal

Sentencing, 2010–2016

Bryan Holmes1, Christopher D’Amato1,

and Stephen T. Holmes2

Abstract

Prior sentencing research has identified leniency afforded to females (compared with

males) and those with familial responsibility (compared with those without). Studies

have also found that the effect of defendant gender, familial responsibility, and their

intersections depend on the type of offense examined. What remains unclear is the

situations in which these factors matter more or less. The purpose of this study is to

disaggregate extralegal effects by understanding how gender, familial responsibility,

and their intersections influence federal sentencing outcomes across various offense

types. Findings from this study suggest that gender, familial responsibility, and their

combinations exert different influences depending on the (a) dependent variable and

(b) offense type examined.

Keywords

punishment, gender, sentencing, family

At sentencing, judges are said to rely on both legally and substantively rational consid-

erations (Savelsberg, 1992). Legally rational considerations include offense serious-

ness, criminal history, and aggravating circumstances such as the presence of a weapon

1University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA

2University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA

Corresponding Author:

Bryan Holmes, Graduate Research Assistant, School of Criminal Justice, University of Cincinnati, 2600

Clifton Ave, Cincinnati, OH 45221, USA.

Email: holmesbs@mail.uc.edu

1021899CJPXXX10.1177/08874034211021899Criminal Justice Policy ReviewHolmes et al.

research-article2021

400 Criminal Justice Policy Review 33(4)

(Kramer & Ulmer, 2009). Meanwhile, substantively rational considerations include

those used to individualize punishment to the defendant such as culpability attribu-

tions, social cost of incarceration, and familial responsibility (Engen et al., 2003). In

support of the conceptualization of courts as battling formal and substantive rational-

ity, judges have been found to rely on both legally and (to a lesser extent) substantively

rational considerations (Doerner & Demuth, 2010, 2014; Kim et al., 2019; Spohn,

2000). For example, while legal factors explain the majority of variation in sentencing

decisions, females tend to receive more lenient sentences than similarly situated males

(Etienne, 2010). In addition, female status tends to matter more when the female takes

a familial role (Bickle & Peterson, 1991; Koons-Witt, 2002).

The relationship between gender, familial responsibility, and sentencing is not

static across offense types. Rodriguez et al. (2006) found that the female advantage at

the incarceration decision exists for property and drug offenses, but not violent

offenses. Koons-Witt and colleagues (2014) found that females are sentenced to

shorter periods of incarceration for drug trafficking offenses but not drug possession

offenses. Furthermore, research indicates that drug offending mothers tend to be sen-

tenced particularly harshly (Arditti, 2012; Spohn, 1999) compared with mothers who

commit other offenses (e.g., economic, property). Given this mixed evidence across

offense types, there is a pressing need for research that disaggregates these effects to

better understand the loci of extralegal disparity in sentencing outcomes.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of gender, familial responsibility,

and the combination of the two on incarceration and sentence length decisions in fed-

eral courts using offense-specific samples. Specifically, we examine these relation-

ships across (a) drug trafficking, (b) firearm, and (c) economic offenses in federal

courts. These offense types make up a substantial portion of the U.S. citizen federal

caseload (72% combined from 2010 to 2016). To achieve our study goal, we use the

annual United States Sentencing Commission (USSC) Monitoring of Federal Criminal

Sentences data sets from 2010 to 2016.

This study extends prior literature on the relationship between gender, familial

responsibility, and sentencing in a few ways. First, prior research on federal courts has

commonly entered gender and dependents as direct measures (Feldmeyer & Ulmer,

2011; Holmes & Feldmeyer, 2019). While these relationships are important, examin-

ing only direct effects can sometimes mask relationships when the influence of one

variable is not constant across another (e.g., being a female caretaker results in more

of a sentencing discount than being a male caretaker). In the current study, we examine

the direct and joint effects of defendant gender and dependents. Second, in the post-

guideline era, there has been a movement past analyzing whether extralegal sentenc-

ing disparity exists and toward analyzing when extralegal disparity is aggravated or

mitigated (Tillyer et al., 2015; Ulmer, 2012). This study contributes to that research

agenda by using offense-specific samples. Third, instead of using just (a) number of

dependents or(b) whether a defendant has dependents, we analyze models interchang-

ing the two, a continuous and dichotomous measure, to see if dependents effects are

reflective of the number of dependents or simply holding a familial role.1 Last, due to

the merging of 6 years of federal sentencing data, we are able to analyze defendants