Sentencing the White-Collar Offender

With a modified version of the white-collar sentencing model developed by Wheeler, Weisburd, and Bode (1982), we analyze sentences for a sample of white-collar offenders adjudicated in one federal court between 1970 and 1980. Contrary to Wheeler et al., in this study socioeconomic status is not related to sanction severity. Higher-status offenders are no more likely to be incarcerated than low-status offenders, nor do they receive longer sentences. We explore whether the relationship between socioeconomic status and sentence severity changed after the 1974 Watergate scandal. Our analysis suggests that the contextual characteristics of the districts studied by Wheeler et al. may account for their anomalous finding on social status. We argue that contextual variations in criminal sentencing extend both to social status and race.