Presumptive Sentence v. Base Offense Level: Contrasting Racial/Ethnic Disparity Across Analytic Approaches

• In Event: Influence of Extralegal Factors on Sentencing Outcomes

Abstract

There is disagreement in the federal sentencing literature on the proper way to assess racial/ethnic disparity in sentencing outcomes. Since the early 2000s scholars have modally relied on the presumptive sentence approach: employing guideline minimum as the primary legal control. In recent years, the presumptive sentence approach has been critiqued for being too narrow and filtering out potential racial/ethnic disparities in the presentencing process. In response to these critiques, a small but growing body of work has begun to use the base offense level approach: including base offense level and criminal history category as the primary legal controls. Despite often being used interchangeably, these two approaches have the potential to estimate two different “types” of disparities and answer two qualitatively different research questions. The goal of this study is to assess the implications of using the presumptive sentence v. base offense level approach to estimate racial/ethnic federal sentencing disparity. Explicitly, we decompose racial/ethnic effects using each approach with federal sentencing data ranging from 2018 to 2020.

Authors

• Bryan Holmes, Florida State University

• Ben Feldmeyer, University of Cincinnati