Racial Disparities in Criminal Sentencing and Drug Court Eligibility

• In Event: Racial Disparities in Criminal Justice Decision-Making: Sentencing, Courts, and Policy Design

Abstract

National data indicates Black defendants are underrepresented in drug court admissions relative to their representation among those arrested for drug offenses while white defendants comprise a significantly larger share of drug court participants than their representation among drug arrests. The underrepresentation of Black defendants and overrepresentation of white defendants may be explained by eligibility requirements that appear race-neutral at face value but produce disparities. Some drug courts exclude defendants with past felony convictions and, in turn, disproportionally exclude Black defendants who are less likely than white defendants to have similar charges reduced to misdemeanor offenses.   

This paper examines whether racial disparities in criminal justice processing ultimately restrict Black defendants' access to drug courts through commonly used exclusionary criteria.     

Using approximately 350,000 misdemeanor and felony case data from Franklin County, Ohio, spanning 2006-2020, the paper examines racial disparities across multiple case processing decision points and tests whether Black defendants are more likely to be convicted of offenses commonly used as drug court exclusion criteria.   

First, we provide a descriptive account of the conviction history of the population of individuals with any drug criminal record in Franklin County by race and sex. Second, we assess the relationship between race, sex, and the odds of several key outcomes. For binary dependent variables, we use logistic regression. For categorical dependent variables, we use multinomial logistic regression. Last, to assess the relationship between race, gender, and sentence length net of controls, we use OLS regression.   

Black defendants are more likely to be convicted in misdemeanor cases overall and across offense types. In felony cases, there is no overall difference, but Black defendants are more likely to be convicted of drug, drug‑trafficking, and weapons offenses. They are also less likely to have charges amended to lesser offenses. In misdemeanor cases, this disadvantage appears both overall and for major offense categories (drug, violent, and property). In felony cases, Black defendants are less likely to receive charge reductions at the original‑charges‑to‑common‑pleas stage overall and for drug, violent, weapons, and alcohol offenses. At the common‑pleas‑to‑conviction stage, disparities are not significant overall but persist for drug, drug trafficking, alcohol, and weapons offenses. Across stages, Black defendants experience less leniency and greater rigidity in sentencing, particularly for offenses used as exclusion criteria in drug courts.   

The study makes several contributions. First, it documents racial disparities across multiple decision points addressing a gap in muti-stage analysis at the state and local levels where most prior work has focused on federal cases. Second, it connects the sentencing disparities literature to drug court access through cumulative disadvantage and structural exclusion frameworks and offers a mechanism for understanding how seemingly race-neutral eligibility criteria can translate racial disparities into formal barriers to rehabilitation. Third, offense type analysis reveals disparities in the offense types used to exclude individuals from drug courts. Fourth, the municipal to common pleas matched dataset makes it possible to observe charge movement across prosecutorial stages rather than only at sentencing were sentencing literature typically beings.

Authors

• Lydia Applin, The Ohio State University
  Non-Presenting Co-Author

• Sadé Lindsay, Cornell University
  Non-Presenting Co-Author

• Tasha Perdue, The Ohio State University
  Presenting Author