Contextual Disparities in Guidelines Departures: Courtroom Social Contexts, Guidelines Compliance, and Extralegal Disparities in Criminal Sentencing

• NCJ Number: 211131
• Journal: Criminology Volume: 43 Issue: 3 Dated: August 2005 Pages: 761-796
• Author(s): Brian D. Johnson
• Date Published: August 2005
• Length: 36 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This Pennsylvania study examined the theoretical and empirical links between criminal court social contexts and the judicial imposition of sentences that deviate from the recommendations of the State's sentencing guidelines.

Abstract

Unlike many other systems, Pennsylvania's sentencing guidelines govern the sentencing of both misdemeanor and felony offenses and are accompanied by relatively frequent judicial departures from the guidelines, despite wide presumptive ranges compared with other States. The dependent variables in the current study were divided into two dichotomous outcomes that separately measured downward and upward departures from the guidelines. The independent variables included a variety of individual-level and contextual-level sentencing factors. Individual-level factors included a multitude of offense, offender, and case processing characteristics. The contextual variables consisted of both courtroom characteristics and measures of county-level social contexts. Courtroom characteristics covered court size, caseload pressure, trial rate, and local jail capacity. The study used hierarchical linear modeling procedures designed to account for the nested nature of criminal sentencing data. This study found convincing evidence that the judicial use of departure sentences, along with the relative emphasis placed on individual sentencing considerations, varied significantly across courts. Moreover, these cross-court variations were not random but rather were apparently the result of various structural and cultural characteristics of the courtroom environment and its surrounding community. Evidence was found for the importance of court size, with offenders sentenced in large courts receiving substantial sentencing leniency regarding the likelihood of both downward and upward departures. Modest support was found for the importance of racial group in sentencing departures, in that larger Hispanic populations in a court jurisdiction reduced the odds of downward departures and increased the likelihood of upward departures. 5 tables and 27 references