Judicial diversity and sentencing disparity across U.S. District Courts

Abstract

PurposeMuch of the prior literature examining the impact of judge race and sex on case-level sentencing outcomes remain mixed. There is a lack of research investigating how the composition of the judiciary influences sentencing. The current study attempts to fill this gap and examines the influence of the race, sex, and political composition of U.S. District Courts for two offense categories. MethodsUsing data from the United States Sentencing Commission Monitoring of Federal Criminal Sentences and the Federal Judicial Center Biographical Directory, district-level sentencing outcomes for drug and economic offenders processed between October 1, 2007 through September 20, 2016 were analyzed. ResultsResults indicate that judicial racial composition influences the percentage of economic cases sentenced to prison and average sentence length for both economic and drug cases, but in opposite directions. Political composition impacted the percentage of economic cases sentenced to prison while gender composition was not found to be a significant predictor. ConclusionsThese findings highlight that in order to obtain a clearer picture of how judicial racial composition impacts sentencing, it is necessary to examine offense categories separately and beyond case-level outcomes.