Detecting Sentencing Disparity: Some Problems and Evidence

Research has yet to establish convincingly either the existence or the absence of sentencing discrimination. This paper identifies major methodological and conceptual problems inherent in sentencing disparity research and presents and empirical analysis of the racial disparity argument for the years 1969, 1973, and 1977. Evidence is presented that indicates (1) sentencing patterns fluctuate with contextual variation, (2) racial discrimination at the sentencing stage exists, and (3) the detection of sentencing discrimination can easily be obscurred by a number of pitfalls