Unwarranted Disparity in Federal Sentencing

Abstract

Research has recently shown a renewed interest in the effect of citizenship status on sentencing outcomes. This line of investigation, however, is limited to the individual-level analysis. In addition, research on the threat hypothesis has overwhelmingly focused on racial and ethnic threat. This study extends prior research by testing the social/group threat hypothesis in terms of citizenship and examines two primary variables of interest—the size of the noncitizen population and offender citizenship status. This study seeks to find how the size of the noncitizen population as a macro-level factor and offender citizenship status as a micro-level factor independently and jointly affect federal sentencing. The independent effects of other macro-level factors in the context of courts and areas on sentencing decisions, as well as their interactions with offender citizenship status, are also examined. With all offenses considered together, the cross-level finding provides support for social threat posed by noncitizen offenders, revealing that judges in districts with a large noncitizen population impose longer sentences on noncitizen offenders than those in districts with a small noncitizen population.