Racial Disparities in Federal Sentencing: A Quantile Regression Approach PRELIMINARY AND INCOMPLETE PLEASE DO NOT CITE WITHOUT PERMISSION

The Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 explicitly prohibits the use of demographic characteristics in determining prison sentence, yet researchers continue to find evidence of disparity in sentences on the basis of race, ethnicity and gender. We employ a quantile regression technique that estimates the black-white sentencing gap across the entire sentencing distribution, rather than only at the mean. Our results show that racial disparity exists for some types of offenses, however, the impact of race varies greatly dependent on the location along the sentencing distribution. For some types of offenses, disparity only exists for the lower half of the sentencing distribution. We also find that the OLS coefficient estimate for racial disparity may be misleading, suggesting disparity is much larger than what we find using quantile regression analysis. Finally, we find that much of the racial disparity in federal sentencing is due to departures from the Sentencing Guidelines from offenders providing substantial assistance to the government in the prosecution of others. JEL Codes: K14, K40