This dissertation examines data from 1998 through 2016 to determine the impacts of changes to the federal criminal justice system since the implementation of the 1987 federal sentencing guidelines.
This dissertation presents research that contributes to knowledge for those seeking to make evidence-based policy reforms to reduce extralegal disparities in criminal justice sentencing. The paper answers two questions: how the influence of defendant race/ethnicity on federal sentencing has changed over time, and second, how the effects of district and district-level predictors on sentencing outcomes have changed over time. It provides a background of the federal sentencing system; a detailed description of the research study, including data, sample, measures, and analytic plan; and analyzes various factors of race/ethnicity descriptive trends as well as race/ethnicity-by-gender interactions descriptive trends. The dissertation also analyzes whether districts have become more or less alike in their sentencing practices over time, and if the contextual effects of district-level factors have changed over time. Research results suggest that the federal system has failed to progress towards reducing extralegal disparities in sentencing, and that federal defendants continue to receive differential sentences based on their race/ethnicity and where they are sentenced, net other factors. Results also indicate that extralegal disparities in sentencing have changed over time, with some increasing while other disparities have decreased.