Over the last several decades, federal courts have devoted considerable effort towards
improving fairness in sentencing. Despite these efforts, research has consistently shown that …

Objectives To test the cumulative disadvantage hypothesis—that system-level racial and
ethnic disparities accumulate from intake to final disposition—by investigating relative and …

Objectives Since 2000, sentencing scholars have commonly controlled for racial/ethnic
differences in underlying criminal conduct using presumptive sentence. In recent years, the …

The current study aims to examine the joint effects of defendant race and gender on (1)
downward sentencing departures (likelihood and length) and (2) upward sentencing …

Objectives: This study seeks to understand how national origin and legal migration status of
noncitizen defendants in federal criminal courts shape incarceration and sentence length …

This study uses 16 years (2002–2017) of federal criminal drug sentences from the US
Sentencing Commission (USSC) to examine trends in two criminal sentencing outcomes …

Downward sentencing departures in federal courts are generally either prosecutor-initiated
(government-sponsored) or judge-initiated. This study examines the direct and joint …

Research examining how federal courts have responded to the 21st century overdose crisis
is limited, and even less is known about how district exposure to overdoses has shaped …

In the 1990s, the United States Attorneys' Offices implemented programs to make sentencing
for immigration offenses more efficient by designating a number of “Fast-Track” districts. In …

Legal and qualitative studies have highlighted that courtroom actors consider multiple
aspects of criminal records. However, most quantitative studies on sentencing only included …