Chapter Four: Racial, Ethnic, and Gender Disparities in Federal Sentencing Today

Fair sentencing is individualized sentencing. Unwarranted disparity is defined as different treatment of individual offenders who are similar in relevant ways, or similar treatment of individual offenders who differ in characteristics that are relevant to the purposes of sentencing. Membership in a particular demographic group is not relevant to the purposes of sentencing, and there is no reason to expect—and some might argue no to reason to care—if the average sentence of different demographic groups are the same or different. As long as the individuals in each group are treated fairly, average group differences simply reflect differences in the characteristics of the individuals who comprise each group. Group disparity is not necessarily unwarranted disparity.