Race, remorse, and sentence reduction: Is saying you're sorry enough?

Federal sentencing policy now allows for reduced penalties in cases where offenders formally accept responsibility for their crimes. Using data from a random sample of 12 district courts, the present research examines this structured adjustment in the sentencing process. The data provide controls for offender characteristics, both legally relevant and extralegal, and measures of offense type and severity. We use logistic regression procedures to analyze additive and interaction models. Results confirm that the offender's race/ethnicity, controlling for offender and offense characteristics, has a significant influence on the sentence reduction for acceptance of responsibility. Because the awarding of this sentence reduction involves displays of emotion, we draw on interviews with selected court personnel to explore how ethnic and cultural factors affect both the offender's expression of remorse and the court's perception of and reaction to those testimonies. The study suggests that cultural factors, through race/ethnicity, influence intermediate decisions under sentencing guidelines that were designed to be racially neutral.