Legal and Extralegal Origins of Sentencing Disparities: Evidence from Russia's Criminal Courts

Abstract

This article conducts the first analysis of sentencing disparities related to social characteristics of offenders in Russia. It uses a data set of sentencing decisions consisting of over 5 million observations representing the entire population of defendants between 2009 and 2013. The analysis focuses on all felony cases processed by federal district courts (2,905,608 individuals) and estimates sentencing disparities (decisions to imprison and sentence length) related to general social status characteristics of offenders as well as to finer occupational differences. The Russian Criminal Code prescribes that judges should account for the personality of the defendant and his or her family condition, but does not specify how this should be done in practice. Controlling for major legal characteristics of offense and offender, as well as for judge‐level variation, the analysis shows sentencing disparities connected with gender, unemployment, citizenship, local residence, marital status, and occupational status of defendants. Disparities are explained with reference to different origins. Thus, a more severe punishment of law enforcement employees for premeditated crimes corresponds to the legal rule; a harsher treatment of the unemployed and a more lenient sentencing of married defendants are interpreted with reference to legitimate concerns about repeated offending. Extralegal bias is manifested in the more severe punishment of private entrepreneurs and softer punishment of college students. Sentencing disparities are also estimated at different values of sentence length.