Downward departures in US federal courts: do family ties, sex, and race/ethnicity matter?

Given the gendered and racialized discourse about drug offenders with family ties, the present study used binary logistic regression of federal sentencing data (2001-2003) to examine whether family ties influence defendants' likelihood of receiving downward departures and whether defendants...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ethnic and racial studies 2011-04, Vol.34 (4), p.683-706
Main Author: Logue, Melissa A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Courts
Criminal justice
Criminal sentences
Defendants
Discourse
Drug Offenders
drug offenses
Drugs
Ethnicity
Family
Family ties
Federal courts
federal sentencing guidelines
Female Offenders
Females
Gender
Larceny
Males
Offenders
Race
Regression analysis
Sentencing
sentencing disparity
Sex
U.S.A
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Given the gendered and racialized discourse about drug offenders with family ties, the present study used binary logistic regression of federal sentencing data (2001-2003) to examine whether family ties influence defendants' likelihood of receiving downward departures and whether defendants' race/ethnicity and sex condition any family ties effect. The results reveal no variation in the effects of family ties by race/ethnicity, but do lend credence to concerns that considering family ties could produce sex disparities in departure outcomes. Departure chances increase for cohabitating offenders of both sexes who have dependents, but become more pronounced for females than for males relative to their non-familied counterparts. For married offenders without dependents, males' departure chances increase while those for females decrease. Future research needs to examine whether similar patterns emerge in analyses of other types of offenders (e.g. larceny) and other sentencing decisions.
ISSN:0141-9870
1466-4356
DOI:10.1080/01419870.2010.487568