By Mari McGilton and Sabrina Rizk

Pressure to identify and reduce disparities through policy has risen in recent years, but these priorities are neither new nor easily achieved. Most studies of these disparities are siloed from each other and are limited to a single outcome measure, comparison group, and/or comparison time point, meaning policymakers end up relying on incomplete information to make critical decisions. This is especially true for federal and state sentencing decision-makers, who are bound by policies made across multiple agencies. Federal sentencing decision-makers specifically are driven by US attorney general directives, legislative policies, Supreme Court rulings, and amendments to the US federal sentencing guidelines. These policies affect several decision-makers at different stages in the federal sentencing process (e.g., attorneys’ application of mandatory minimum statutes, federal probation officers’ determination of final offense level, federal judges’ sentencing decisions). Most studies on disparities at the federal sentencing stage of the criminal legal system investigate only racial disparities in sentencing decisions, such as in/out decisions (i.e., prison/no prison), and/or sentence lengths, and evaluate changes in these disparities based on predetermined points in time from predetermined policies assumed to have impacted those changes. Although these studies provide critical information on disparities in federal sentencing, we could expand our knowledge and the methods used. Funded by the National Institute of Justice, we sought to answer three key research questions: 1. Do racial disparities vary across three stages of federal sentencing and over time? If so, how? 2. During which years do the measured racial disparities have a statistically significant decrease? 3. Which policies likely impacted these decreases the most? What are the commonalities between them?

Washington DC: Urban Institute, 2023. 53p.