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The New Face of Legal Inequality: Noncitizens and the Long-Term Trends in Sentencing Disparities across U.S. District Courts, 1992–2009

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Michael T. Light
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Abstract

In the wake of mass immigration from Latin America, legal scholars have shifted focus from racial to ethnic inequality under the law. A series of studies now suggest that Hispanics may be the most disadvantaged group in U.S. courts, yet this body of work has yet to fully engage the role of citizenship status. The present research examines the punishment consequences for non-U.S. citizens sentenced in federal courts between 1992 and 2009. Drawing from work in citizenship studies and sociolegal inequality, I hypothesize that nonstate members will be punished more severely than U.S. citizens, and any trends in Hispanic ethnicity over this period will be linked to punitive changes in the treatment of noncitizens. In line with this hypothesis, results indicate a considerable punishment gap between citizens and noncitizens—larger than minority-white disparities. Additionally, this citizenship “penalty” has increased at the incarceration stage, explaining the majority of the increase in Hispanic-white disparity over the past two decades. As international migration increases, these findings call for greater theoretical and empirical breadth in legal inequality research beyond traditional emphases, such as race and ethnicity.

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Articles
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Law & Society Review , Volume 48 , Issue 2 , June 2014 , pp. 447 - 478
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© 2014 Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

Support for this research was provided by Grant (SES-1226453) from the National Science Foundation and by the Crawford Family Fellowship in Ethical Inquiry through the Rock Ethics Institute at Penn State University. An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2009 Annual Meeting for the American Society of Criminology in Philadelphia, PA and at the SUNY Albany Symposium on the Past and Future of Empirical Sentencing Research in 2010. I am especially indebted to Jeffrey Ulmer, Michael Massoglia, Ryan King, Wayne Osgood, Derek Kreager, Glenn Firebaugh, Darrell Steffensmeier, and several anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. I also thank Andrew Raridon for his assistance.

References

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Case Cited

United States v. Booker 543 U.S. 220 (2005)Google Scholar
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