Federal Drug Sentencing and the Overdose Epidemic

Abstract

Abstract Research examining how federal courts have responded to the 21st century overdose crisis is limited, and even less is known about how district exposure to overdoses has shaped federal drug sentences. The current study examines how drug sentence lengths are contextualized by district-level overdose death rates across both substance type and race/ethnicity using federal sentencing data, Centers for Disease Control overdose mortality data, and other data on district social and legal characteristics for the 2015-2020 period. Findings reveal that district overdose death rates (especially involving minorities) are associated with slightly shorter drug sentences, net of other factors. In addition, Black-White and Hispanic-White sentence length gaps in drug cases declined in districts with more overdose deaths in part due to higher White sentence lengths, but mostly because minority sentences became shorter as district overdose mortality rates increased. These results suggest that exposure to the overdose crisis has not resulted in greater punitiveness in drug sentence lengths, and if anything, has been tied to leniency especially for minorities. Implications of these results for research on the 21st century overdose crisis, federal court responses to this crisis (especially across race/ethnicity), and for contextual effects in sentencing are discussed.