Sources and Factors of Federal Human Trafficking Sentencing Decisions

• In Event: Anti-trafficking Protections, Services, and Decision Making

Abstract

Securing convictions and harsh sentences have been critical to antihuman trafficking efforts in the United States. At the same time, Federal sentencing has undergone reforms providing judges with more discretion, potentially resulting in less uniform sentencing outcomes for Federal defendants. The purpose of this dissertation was to examine the characteristics of convicted human trafficking offenders and the components sentencing judges consider important with this new crime by examining the predictors of human trafficking sentences. To do so, this study employed human trafficking framing through a group threat sentencing theory perspective along with the overlaying context of increased media coverage of human trafficking. Data sources included quantitative sentencing data from the United States Sentencing Commission and a dataset of human trafficking news media articles. The analysis was also run by time periods delineated by human trafficking legislation and important U.S. Supreme Court decisions on sentencing to determine whether particular factors were predictors of human trafficking sentences at different times. Implications from this research, including the impact of appellate decisions, and future research are discussed.

Author

• Monica DeLateur, Massachusetts Appeals Court