The tyranny of quantity: How the overemphasis on drug quantity in federal drug sentencing leads to disparate and anomalous sentencing outcomes.

摘要

This dissertation examined evidence for disparate and anomalous drug sentencing outcomes arising from an overemphasis on drug quantity in the federal sentencing guidelines and mandatory minimums. Data from the 1997 Survey of Inmates in Federal Correctional Facilities were used to investigate the appropriateness of drug quantity as a measure of offense seriousness, the determinants of sentence length, mandatory minimum sentencing outcomes, and the application of firearm sentence enhancements in drug cases. The multivariate analyses employed a range of sentencing predictors, including measures of drug offense seriousness (e.g., drug type and quantity, role in the offense, firearm use), criminal history, case processing factors (e.g., guilty plea, charge bargaining), and sociodemographic characteristics (e.g., race, gender, citizenship). Methods employed to reduce bias and improve the efficiency of the model estimates included imputation of missing values to deal with item nonresponse, design-based estimation to account for the survey's complex sampling design, and truncated-censored regression to handle limited response on the dependent variable. The main findings revealed that (1) drug quantity---as a measure of harm---is a poor surrogate for culpability- and dangerousness-based offense factors, (2) the overemphasis on quantity results in excessive uniformity in sentencing and creates pressures for guideline evasion, (3) the current 100-to-1 quantity ratio between crack and powder cocaine fosters anomalous and disparate sentencing outcomes by targeting the least culpable crack cocaine offenders with the harshest sanctions, (4) quantity-driven mandatory minimums interact with the guidelines to create sentencing anomalies that fail to differentiate adequately between offenders of varying culpability and dangerousness, and (5) circumvention of firearm sentence enhancements appears to be driven by equity concerns over already severe drug sentences and case pressures to avoid trial. The clearest and most far-reaching implication of this research is that drug quantity is simply too blunt an instrument to meet the demands of principled sentencing. The major policy implication is that the central, organizing role of drug quantity in federal drug sentencing needs to be replaced with a more balanced approach that more equitably focuses on factors of harm, culpability, and dangerousness in assessing sentencing liability.