Sentencing Disparities

Sentencing disparities occur when similar cases are not disposed similarly or when cases with different weights are disposed similarly. Sentencing disparities result in a lack of due consideration of legal factors surrounding the case under consideration. Despite the increasing debate surrounding sentencing disparities, assessment of this concept presents various challenges due to the lack of standard measures to justify the existence of the claim. In addition, various factors need to be considered in the determination of a sentence including rehabilitation, incapacitation, or deterrence before the case at hand is being subjected to determination in a discriminative manner. Sentencing disparities have to be determined by differences in sentencing based on factors that cannot be directly attributed to the objective of sentencing. Therefore, solving this problem requires the integration of factors and reasoning that is uniform for similar cases and achieves the primary objective of sentencing. In addition, sentencing must be determined in consideration of factors that are directly relevant to the particular case in alignment with the objective of the sentencing.

The United States has the largest criminal justice system across the globe. At least 6.7 million individuals are in some form of correctional control, while another 2.2 million individuals are incarcerated (Post, 2020). The large size of the criminal justice system presents serious challenges to both the security system as well as the incarcerated persons. In addition, the issue of sentencing disparity is masked within the realm of these statistics. Therefore, this study is aimed at studying how demographic factors contribute to sentencing disparities observed in the criminal justice system. More specifically, the study will focus on assessing whether race, gender, or social status influence court decisions on offenders of the same care based on these demographic factors.

Literature Review

The current prevalence of sentencing disparities calls for appropriate measures to be adopted to address this challenge. There is a wide array of research that has been conducted aiming to establish the root cause of the problem in the criminal justice system. Sentencing disparities refer to a scenario where similar offenses are determined disproportionately, which is just a consequence of more wanting justice issues existing in the criminal justice system (Brandon & O’Connell, 2018). This section of the paper evaluates evidence to support this topic in literature to inform existing gaps that should be filled and formulate appropriate strategies to provide a lasting solution.

The criminal justice system is responsible for making arrests, prosecuting offenders, sentencing, and imposing appropriate judgment. The criminal justice is also responsible for defending and punishing those who have been convicted of various offenses. Those who get involved in a criminal offense pass through the police department, adjudication, and correction. Sentencing is the process where a fine or punishment is imposed on a criminal offender. When there are inequalities in the manner in which a penalty is imposed to offenders of the same offense is what constitutes a sentencing disparity (Brandon & O’Connell, 2018). Various factors cause sentencing disparities including systemic issues, race disparities. The findings in such aspects of the criminal justice system would help in making appropriate adjustments in the system to promote equality within the justice system.

Diversity is one of the dynamics of modern society where societies are interacting from various parts of the globe. The race is an aspect of the broad spectrum of diversity, which has been at the center of influencing the criminal justice system. The criminal justice system is guided by adherence to duo processes, controlling crimes, as well as rights of a person (Brandon & O’Connell, 2018). Various employees work within a criminal justice system including the police, judges as well as rehabilitation department personnel who have to operate in a dynamic and diverse environment. They have to work in an environment with different cultures that are defined by varying values and behavior.  Diversity denotes a situation with different people, with different values and behavior which impacts how the criminal justice system functions. There are numerous research studies on sentencing disparities from different angles in a bid to eliminate disparities and promote equality.

Nir and Griffiths (2016) have highlighted the factors that influence sentencing apart from the evidence that has been tabled in a court. Some of the factors that have been found to influence sentencing include age, gender, and race. To a large extent, this is influenced by various guidelines based on race and ethnic profiling. Other factors that have been found to influence judgment include the power of a judge. Nonetheless, certain elements seem to suggest that sentencing is not a factor of evidence but rather on the individual offenders in similar cases which leads to disparities in sentencing. Nir and Griffiths note that there has been a wide disparity in the manner a case is tried against defenders facing similar criminal backgrounds. However, to arrive at a fair decision various legal factors have to be balanced based on the seriousness of the case as well as similar criminal activities in the past.

Lilley Devall & Tucker-Gail (2018) investigated drug offenders based on drug court data and found that they are more likely to arrest minority groups for drug-related offenses. It compared the cases for blacks and whites and found that there were huge disparities between blacks and whites. The Blacks were more likely to be punished for drug offenses compared to their white counterparts. Also, The Blacks were likely to face more severe penalties for drug crimes as opposed to their white counterparts. Therefore, the question of racial disparity regarding sentencing is questioned and would be important to investigate further in conjunction with similar factors that would cause disparities in sentencing.

Clair & Winter (2016) investigated the role of a judge in the judicial process and in deciding a case. An examination of state court judges reveals that the judges are quite aware of the disparities that exist and yet nothing has been done to address the problem. However, this issue is dependent on the perspective of the judge because some judges would advocate for a fair and unbiased judgment while other judges would act as channels to allow the incident to take place without regard to correct the problem (Clair & Winter 2016). The position of a judge would be the instrument to availing a lasting solution to the issue because they are the final judges. However, the current system is already biased because some races are overly represented than others, which acts as the basis for the propagation of the disparities within the criminal justice system. The gaps within the justice system should be studied to investigate the causes of disparities from the justice system to inform appropriate intervention strategies.

There have been suggestions that adopting alternatives to incarceration would help a great deal in addressing the offenders’ needs, which would eventually lead to the adoption of pro-social behavior. Aguiar & Leavall (2017) state that alternatives to incarceration would go a long way in helping the offenders to reform and prevent the future tendency of committing a crime. However, these alternatives must be implemented with a keen focus on the implications they would have on the immediate society and the victims. A good example is the FOSA where a judge has the authority to waive a sentence and instead impose alternative community custody, especially for offenders with drug-related offenses (Aguiar & Leavall, 2017). This derives the judges the chance of partial sentencing that would raise disparity issues. This has achieved a significant reduction in the number of cases associated with drug offenses. However, there are no demographic-based interventions suggested to control disparities within the criminal justice system. However, there are no clear controls factors that were suggested and this is attempting to build on these findings by integrating the influence of demographic factors on sentencing disparities as defined by the length of a sentence.

Franklin (2018) assessed the correlation between race and ethnicity; and the length of a sentence and found that the sentence is not based on racial factors, but rather factors associated with past injustices.  To some extent, race influences the length of a sentence, but it is not the sole factor that can be attributed to the observed disparities in the prison system. Although one might tend to think that racial factors do not influence the length of imprisonment, it cannot be refuted for a fact that significant evidence still attributes race to the disproportionate case rulings. Many blacks are more likely than whites to be subjected to longer prison terms compared to their white counterparts. Therefore, a more vigorous approach is suggested to determine how demographic factors play a role in the perceived disparities.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime posits that gender plays a significant challenge in the achievement of justice for all. Women are especially subject to discrimination in different t aspects of the criminal justice system whether they are victims, witnesses, offenders, or prisoners. The justice system is much focusing on the male offenders who were predominantly offenders but pays less attention to the increasing rise in the number of female offenders. This poses the challenge of ensuring that there is equality within the criminal justice system based on gender, which has exposed professionals within the criminal justice system to make gender-biased decisions. This requires a refinement of the criminal justice laws that strike balance between males and females and avoid any bias and at the same time deal with the challenges that women have to face when in the criminal justice system. This finding is important because it lays a foundation for the target research.

Pina-Sánchez & Grech (2018) studied unwarranted disparities in court by analyzing contextual characteristics that are captured by non-legal factors such as socio-economic aspects. The findings indicated that more severe punishments were more likely to be passed on individuals from minority neighborhoods. This further illustrates the fact that it is hard to address the question of inequality without due consideration to the issue of minority members of the population irrespective of the social context within which the particular disparities are observed. This helps build on the topic of other demographic characteristics and how they influence court judgment.

The existing gaps in understanding the factors that influence court judgment are very critical. The existing literature tends to be aligned to racial minorities as well as criminal characteristics. This includes underrepresentation of some races while others are blamed on criminal justice system factors such as perspectives on certain races by justice professionals. Nonetheless, the issue of sentencing disparity is a serious concern to the criminal justice system officials and needs to be addressed. Apart from racial issues, there is needed to investigate other contextual factors such as socioeconomic characteristics to establish their role in skewed sentencing practices within a justice system. Adopting these perspectives would undoubtedly bring new thoughts into the criminal justice system and lay the foundation for further assessment of the socio factors that might not be captured in the existing literature. This would seek to address the misconceptions in the criminal justice system on the view that race is the main focus when assessing sentencing disparities as evident from analysis of literature in this respect. Accounting for other demographic characteristics would help to understand these disparities inform criminal justice system professionals on issues they should fine-tune when decision cases to ensure fairness irrespective of gender, race, or social-economic status of an individual.

Hypotheses

The dependent variable for this study will be the jail term penalty. Most of the studies reviewed have overly assessed the impact of race on sentencing disparities. This study will go into detail to determine how gender, socioeconomic profiles as well as race impact the jail term penalty imposed on an individual. The race has been studied on how it affects sentencing disparities but little has been done to specifically establish its impact on the jail term penalty. The gender of an offender is another fact that this research seeks to determine how it influences the jail term penalty imposed on the offenders. Finally, the socio-economic profile of an individual has been assessed to determine their impact on a jail term. These factors would help establish the primary cause of sentencing disparities among Americans.

The following research hypotheses have been constructed to guide the study:

1. The race of an individual influences the length of a jail term when convicted in a criminal court.
2. The gender of an offender has a significant impact on the length of a jail term when convicted in a criminal court.

• The socioeconomic profile of an individual has a significant impact on the length of a jail term penalty imposed on an individual.

Method

The study will focus on evaluating the sentencing disparities based on gender, race, and socioeconomic characteristics of an individual. Previous studies have focused on a broad spectrum when trying to analyze the correlation between sentencing disparities and race. However, there are no studies that have been conducted to establish how race influences the jail term and whether other demographic characteristics of an individual such as gender and socioeconomic influence the length of a jail term. The study focuses on establishing how demographic characteristics (the independent variable) influence sentencing disparities (dependent variable). The independent variable are gender, race, and socioeconomic profile. The dependent variable is the length of jail term. The control variable for the study will be the crime of the accused as well as their criminal history, which could also affect the length of jail term.

Gender will be categorized into male and female and evaluate how one’s gender contribute to disparities in the length of jail terms. Race will be categorized into White, African American, Asian American, Native American. Socioeconomic variable will be analyzed from the perspective of annual household income with 5 categories given including under $15000, 15000 – 34,999, 35000 – 74,999, 75,000 – 149,999, and above $150,000. The crime of the accused as a control variable is used in the sense that various crimes have different sentencing periods and thus could affect the effect of other variables. This is same case with the criminal history. To control for this, the participants in the study will need to have committed the same crime and have a clean criminal history.

The research will involve 150 participants whose data is available in the United States Sentencing Commission website (https://www.ussc.gov/research/datafiles/commission-datafiles ). This will involve randomly picking an individual from the datafile which contain thousands of entries and filling out survey questionnaires to be used as a source of data for the study.  However, for the participant to be included in the study, all their records including gender, race, and socioeconomic profile will have to be available. All the participants in the study will have been convicted of drug-related offenses because the crime of the accused will be used as the control variable. The website provides datafiles that exclude identifiers and provide fiscal year data for researchers interested in studying federal sentencing practices through quantitative methods.

Analysis

The data collected using the questionnaires will be analyzed through Univariate and Bivariate analysis using the Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS) version 22. This will help establish whether the claims of the research hypothesis are supported by or refuted by the data collected from the study population. The data collected will be analyzed based on information associated with gender, race, and socioeconomic status to determine how they influence the length of a jail term and consequential impact on sentencing disparities. This will help determine how various demographic characteristics of an individual influence the length of a jail term.

By Univariate analysis, the researcher will use a single variable to explain causes and relationships. Through the computation of mean, mode, median, standard deviation, the researcher will be able to determine patterns in univariate data. By use of Bivariate analysis, on the other hand, the researcher will be able to determine whether there is a relationship between two different variables. Using a multiple linear regression model the quantitative data will be used to analyze a relationship between one dependent variable and two independent variables. Correlation and coefficient will be calculated from the data to determine if there is a relationship between the variables under investigation where a zero will mean that there is no correlation, and 1 (either positive or negative) means that the variables are perfectly correlated.

Expected Results

The results from this study are expected to support the hypotheses that demographic factors influence the sentencing disparities within the criminal justice system. The gender, race, and socioeconomic status of an individual are likely to dictate the length of a jail term imposed on an individual facing a drug-related offense. This will help in building on the existing body of research about race and its influence on sentencing disparities by bringing in new perspectives that focus on considering other demographic characteristics other than race such as gender and socioeconomic characteristics. The findings will help inform whether the gender of an offender has an impact on the jail term imposed over the same criminal offense. If the hypothesis is not answered by the results from the data analysis, it would be prudent to evaluate other factors that could be impacting sentencing disparities apart from the impact of demographic factors that have been overly researched in the current and previous studies.

Expected Challenges

One of the challenges expected to arise from the proposed research is how to quantify the socioeconomic profile of an individual within the criminal justice system. It will also be difficult to establish how different individuals from varying socioeconomic segments influence sentencing disparities, but analyzing the variable from the perspective of household income could give insight on the influence of the variable on sentencing periods.

There may arise the problem of understanding individual socioeconomic profiles, which requires the researcher to design research survey questions in a manner that responses can be retrieved with ease from the website datafiles. In addition, some of the entries might be incomplete making the researcher to take time to evaluate a participant before deciding to include them in the study.

Appendix A: Subject Review Form

Description of the research and your participation

You are invited to participate in a research study conducted by             . The purpose of this research is to obtain an understanding of factors that contribute to sentencing disparities within the state of New York.  Your participation will involve answering a series of questions on factors that influence sentencing disparities.

Risks and discomforts

There is no known risk for participants in this research.

Potential benefits

The research will help us understand the factors that cause sentencing disparities and suggest solutions that can be adopted to promote equality.

Protection of confidentiality

All information collected during the course of study will be kept confidential and will only be used for purposes of this study. The information will not contain any unidentifiable data and will be used for the New York State Police department. The data will not be documented any form that might reveal personal identity of the participants.

Voluntary participation

Your participation in this research study is voluntary. You may choose not to participate, and you may withdraw your consent to participate at any time. You will not be penalized in any way should you decide not to participate or to withdraw from this study.

 

 

 

Contact information

Any issues should be raised through the Lamar University Participant Review Board.

Consent

I have read this consent form and have been given the opportunity to ask questions. I give my consent to participate in this study

Participant’s signature_______________________________ Date: _________________

A copy of this consent form should be given to you

 

Appendix B: Sentencing Disparity Survey

 

Tick where appropriate

1. Were you convicted of drug-related crime?

Yes

No

2. Have you ever been convicted before?

Yes

No

3. What is the length of your jail term?

Below 10 years

10 to 20 years

20 to 30 years

Above 30 years

 

 

 

4. What is your race?

White

African American

Asian American

Native American

4. What’s your gender?

Male

Female

Other

5. What is your annual level of household income?

Under $15,000

Between 15,000- 34,999

Between 35,000- 74,999

Between 75,000- 149,000

Above $150,0000