Document Type

Working Paper

Publication Date

3-25-2019

SSRN Discipline

Legal Scholarship Network; Criminal Law & Procedure eJournals; Law School Research Papers - Legal Studies; Law & Society eJournals; Law & Society: Public Law eJournals; Legal Anthropology eJournals; LSN Subject Matter eJournals; AARN Subject Matter eJournals; Political Science Network; Anthropology & Archaeology Research Network

Abstract

This Article empirically illustrates that the introduction of voluntary and presumptive sentencing guidelines at the statelevel can contribute to statistically significant reductions in sentence length interjudge disparities and racial disparities brbrFor much of American history judges had largely unguided discretion to select criminal sentences within statutorily authorized ranges But in the midtolate twentieth century states and the federal government began experimenting with sentencing guidelines designed to reign in judicial discretion to ensure that similarly situated offenders received comparable sentences Some states have made their guidelines voluntary while others have made their guidelines presumptive or mandatory meaning that judges must generally adhere to them unless they can justify a departure brbrIn order to explore the effects of both voluntary and presumptive sentencing guidelines on judicial behavior this Article relies on a comprehensive dataset of 221934 criminal sentences handed down by 355 different judges in Alabama between 2002 and 2015 This dataset provides a unique opportunity to address this empirical question in part because of Alabama's legislative history Between 2002 and 2006 Alabama had no sentencing guidelines In 2006 the state introduced voluntary sentencing guidelines Then in 2013 the state made these sentencing guidelines presumptive for some nonviolent offenses brbrUsing a differenceindifference framework we find that the introduction of voluntary sentencing guidelines in Alabama coincided with a decrease in average sentence length of around seven months When the same guidelines became presumptive the average sentence length dropped by almost two years Further using a triple difference framework we show that the adoption of these sentencing guidelines coincided with around eight to twelvemonth reductions in racebased sentencing disparities and substantial reductions in interjudge sentencing disparities across all classes of offenders Combined this data suggests that voluntary and presumptive sentencing guidelines can help states combat inequality in their criminal justice systems while controlling the sizes of their prison populations

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