Who is Punished More Harshly in Federal Court? The Interaction of Race/Ethnicity, Gender, Age, and Employment Status in the Sentencing of Drug Offenders

• Author: Chandra D. LaFrentz,Cassia Spohn
• Date: 01 December 2006
• Published date: 01 December 2006
• DOI: 10.3818/JRP.8.2.2006.25
• Subject Matter: Article

Who Is Punished More Harshly? • 25

* Abstract

Recent studies of sentencing under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines suggest that

unwarranted disparity has been reduced, but not eliminated. A number of studies

conclude that legally irrelevant variables, including race/ethnicity and gender, con-

tinue to affect the sentences imposed on federal offenders. Research conducted at the

state level also reveals that offender characteristics interact to create a punishment

penalty for young, unemployed black and Hispanic male offenders. Our study builds

on this research. Using data on drug offenders sentenced in three U.S. District Courts,

we test for direct, indirect, and interactive effects of race and ethnicity on sentence se-

verity. We nd that gender, age, and employment status, but not race/ethnicity, have

direct effects on sentencing, and that the effects of gender and employment status are

conditioned by race/ethnicity. On the other hand, our results provide no support for

our hypotheses that young black and Hispanic males and unemployed black and His-

panic males would pay a punishment penalty. We also nd that the offender’s gender

and employment status have effects only in cases sentenced outside the guidelines.

This report is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant

SES0136236. Points of view are those of the authors and do not necessarily reect the

position of the National Science Foundation.

JUSTICE RESEARCH AND POLICY, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2006

© 2006 Justice Research and Statistics Association

* 

Who Is Punished More Harshly in Federal Court?

  The Interaction of Race/Ethnicity, Gender, Age,

and Employment Status in the Sentencing of

  Drug Offenders

Chandra D. LaFrentz

University of Nebraska at Omaha

Cassia Spohn

Arizona State University

26 • Justice Research and Policy

Who Is Punished More Harshly? • 27

Following more than a decade of concern by academics, civil rights activists,

criminal justice practitioners, and legislators regarding the apparent biases and

disparities present in the indeterminate sentencing structure that dominated the

federal sentencing system, the United States Congress passed the Sentencing

Reform Act of 1984 (Tonry, 1996). This act established the United States Sen-

tencing Commission (USSC), which was given the explicit task of promulgating

sentence guidelines designed to ensure honesty, consistency, and proportionality

in the federal sentencing process (U.S. Sentencing Commission [USSC], 2004a).

Research regarding the changes that have occurred since the creation of the

USSC and the subsequent implementation of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines

suggests that although unwarranted disparity has been reduced, it has not been

eliminated (see Spohn, 2000, and USSC, 2004a, for reviews of this research).

A number of studies conclude that legally irrelevant variables, including race/

ethnicity and gender, continue to affect the sentences imposed on federal offend-

ers (Albonetti, 1997, 2002; Everett & Wojtkiewicz, 2002; Mustard, 2001; Pas-

ko, 2002; Stacey & Spohn, 2006; Steffensmeier & Demuth, 2000). Consistent

with the ndings of research using state- or county-level data (for examples, see

Bushway & Piehl, 2001; Chiricos & Bales, 1991; Nobiling, Spohn, & DeLone,

1998; Spohn & Holleran, 2000; Steffensmeier, Ulmer, & Kramer, 1998; Ulmer

& Kramer, 1996), several of these studies also nd either that race and ethnicity

interact with other legally irrelevant factors or that the effects of offender and

case characteristics are conditioned by race and ethnicity. The results of these

studies, in other words, suggest that racial and ethnic disparities are contextual.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the contexts in which the race

and ethnicity of the offender affect the sentences imposed in federal courts. Us-

ing data on drug offenders sentenced in three U.S. District Courts, we test for

direct, indirect, and interactive effects of race and ethnicity on sentence severity.

We also examine the degree to which unwarranted disparity can be attributed

to departures from the guidelines.

* Literature Review

A multitude of studies have examined sentencing outcomes in state and local

jurisdictions (see Chiricos & Crawford, 1995; Spohn, 2000; and Zatz, 2000,

for reviews of this research).1 However, there is a much more limited body of

1 There also are a number of studies by state sentencing commissions that examine

sentencing decisions following the implementation of sentencing guidelines. A number of

these studies examine the extent to which the guidelines reduced disparity in sentencing; see,

for example, Knapp, 1984 (Minnesota sentencing guidelines), Pennsylvania Commission on

Sentencing, 1985, and Washington State Sentencing Guidelines Commission, 1992.

26 • Justice Research and Policy

Who Is Punished More Harshly? • 27

research examining sentencing outcomes under the Federal Sentencing Guide-

lines. The results of these studies suggest that extralegal variables continue to

play a role in federal sentencing decisions. For example, Albonetti (1997), who

examined 1991–1992 drug offenders sentenced under the guidelines, found

that race, ethnicity, and gender had direct effects on sentence length. Everett

and Wojtkiewicz (2002) similarly found that, net of controls for legally relevant

factors, blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans received harsher sentences

than their white counterparts. According to Everett and Wojtkiewicz (2002,

p. 208), “offenders are sanctioned partially for what they have done (offense

characteristics, criminal history), for who they are (race/ethnicity, age, gender),

and also for what they fail to do during the punishment process (plead guilty

or express remorse).”

This conclusion is further validated by research conducted by Mustard

(2001), Steffensmeier and Demuth (2000), Pasko (2002), and Stacey and Spohn

(2006). Although the degree to which extralegal variables inuenced sentencing

varied among the studies, each of them found that race/ethnicity and/or gen-

der inuenced sentencing outcomes. Mustard (2001), for example, found that

factors such as race, gender, education, socioeconomic status, and citizenship

status all affected sentence severity. He also found that unwarranted disparity

was “generated by departures from the guidelines, rather than from differential

sentencing within the guidelines” (Mustard, 2001, p. 306). Cases sentenced

outside the guidelines, in other words, exacerbated the race and gender dispari-

ties. Steffensmeier and Demuth (2000) found that although the criteria judges

used to make sentencing decisions were relatively stable across racial and eth-

nic categories, Hispanic offenders received the harshest sentences, followed by

black offenders, and then white offenders. Pasko (2002) also found that ethnic-

ity had a signicant effect on sentencing; Hispanics received harsher sentences

than whites. Stacey and Spohn’s (2006) analysis of sentence outcomes for drug

offenders found that gender, but not race or ethnicity, affected sentence length,

and that both race and gender inuenced the likelihood of a substantial as-

sistance departure and the magnitude of the sentence discount for providing

substantial assistance.

Only a handful of federal sentencing studies have examined the interaction

of race/ethnicity and other extralegal variables; the research that does exist dem-

onstrates that offender characteristics have both indirect and interactive effects

on sentence outcomes. Albonetti’s (1997, 2002) research on drug offenders, for

example, revealed that gender and race/ethnicity interacted to produce more

lenient sentences for some types of female offenders, and that gender and race/

ethnicity conditioned the effects of guideline departures, guilty pleas, offense se-

riousness, and criminal history on sentence severity. She found that the offender’s

gender affected sentencing decisions for white offenders and black offenders, but

not for Hispanic offenders (Albonetti, 1997). In a later study, Albonetti (2002)

found that white females received the greatest benet

from substantial assistance