Federal Sentencing Guidelines & United States v. Booker: Sentencing Disparity Across Social Context

• In Event: Examining Sentencing Issues Under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines

Abstract

Judicial discretion plays an important role in influencing sentencing outcomes. Disparate outcomes in the Criminal Justice System have been attributed to excessive discretion. In an effort to constrain this discretion, Congress implemented the Federal Sentencing Guidelines in 1987 as part of the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984. These Guidelines limited judicial discretion to the extent where judges were to consider only two factors: criminal history and offense severity. In 2005, the United States v. Booker decision made these Guidelines advisory rather than mandatory. Recent research (e.g, Ulmer et al., 2011) has examined changes in racial/ethnic disparity since Booker, but an emphasis on social contextual variables has been somewhat of an omission. In this research, I use data from 1999-2008 and the 2000 Census to examine the effects of political climate, community composition, and courtroom administration on sentencing outcomes. Results indicate that while most of the “punch” occurs at the individual case-level, both main and interactive contextual effects are evident.

Author

• Jeffrey Nowacki, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale