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(Un)anticipated Effects of Sentencing Reform on the Disparate Treatment of Defendants

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

John Wooldredge ,
Timothy Griffin  and
Fritz Rauschenberg
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Abstract

Despite concerns over racial disparities in imprisonment across the United States, little empirical attention has been paid to how changing the structure of sentencing might affect levels of disparity. This article examines whether Ohio's shift to determinate sentencing corresponded with significant changes in legal and extralegal effects on case outcomes, both generally and differentially for African American and white defendants. Bilevel analyses of felony defendants from 24 jurisdictions reveal relatively few substantive changes in these effects over time. Some changes involved reductions in race-related disparities (e.g., in the severity of charges convicted on), with others reflecting increased disparity (e.g., higher imprisonment likelihoods for African Americans). Findings underscore a modest link between restructured sentencing and actual case outcomes overall, with some relatively mixed effects on levels of disparity.

Type
Punishment in the Twentieth-Century United States
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 39 , Issue 4 , December 2005 , pp. 835 - 874
Copyright
© 2005 Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

Thanks to Travis Pratt for assisting in data collection, and to the anonymous manuscript reviewers for their helpful comments. Supported under award No. 98-CE-VX-0015 from the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. Points of view in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of the U.S. Department of Justice.

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