NCJ Number
230538
Journal
Justice Quarterly Volume: 27 Issue: 3 Dated: June 2010 Pages: 362-393
Date Published
June 2010
Length
32 pages
Annotation
This study examined whether the Federal sentencing guidelines have attained the objective of "reasonable uniformity in sentencing" and minimized the "lawlessness" in sentencing.
Abstract
One of the important goals of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines was to reduce inter-judge disparity in sentencing. In this paper, the authors test the assumption that structuring discretion produced uniformity in Federal sentencing and consistency in the process by which judges arrive at the appropriate sentence. They also examine whether background characteristics of judges affect the sentences they impose on similarly situated offenders. The study used hierarchical linear modeling, nesting the offenders in the judges that sentenced them in order to examine the sentencing decisions of Federal judges in three U.S. District Courts. While it found that significant variation between judges in sentencing is largely accounted for by our level 1 characteristics, it also found that judges arrive at decisions regarding the appropriate sentence in different ways, by attaching differential weights to several of the legally relevant case characteristics and legally irrelevant offender characteristics. Tables and references (Published Abstract)