Federal Criminal Sentencing: Some Measurement Issues with Application to Pre-Guideline Sentencing Disparity

Gender Differences in Criminal Sentencing

Objective. Many studies find that females benefit from their gender in sentencing decisions. Few researchers, however, address whether the gender-sentencing association might be stronger for some crimes, such as minor nonviolent offending, and weaker for other offenses, such as serious violent crime. Method. Using a large random sample of convicted offenders in Texas drawn from a statewide proj...

Risk Assessment in Criminal Sentencing.

The past several years have seen a surge of interest in using risk assessment in criminal sentencing, both to reduce recidivism by incapacitating or treating high-risk offenders and to reduce prison populations by diverting low-risk offenders from prison. We begin by sketching jurisprudential theories of sentencing, distinguishing those that rely on risk assessment from those that preclude it. ...

Fifteen Years after the Federal Sentencing Revolution: How Mandatory Minimums Have Undermined Effective and Just Narcotics Sentencing Perspectives on the Federal Sentencing Guidelines and Mandatory Sentencing

Gene-Environment Interactions, Criminal Responsibility, and Sentencing

Imagine a defendant who has been charged with murder, the intentional homicide of a victim he was robbing with a weapon. He has a history of three previous convictions and imprisonments for armed robbery. Prior to being released from the third term, he publicly threatened to kill any future armed robbery victims who might be able to identify him. When the current victim looked our armed robber ...

Federal Sentencing Can Be Made More Just, If the Sentencing Commission Wants to Make It So