Community Context and Sentencing Decisions: A Multilevel Analysis, Executive Summary

摘要

This executive summary provides an overview of a multilevel analysis of sentencing outcomes for felony defendants across the United States. First, and possibly most importantly, the findings of this research indicate that there is substantial variation across Counties in three sentencing outcomes: in/out (incarceration), sentence type (prison versus jail versus probation/fine), and sentence length, even after controlling for other legal and extralegal factors. This is an interesting finding since many sentencing policies and practices have been implemented in order to make sentencing decisions more uniform and quitable. Perhaps these sentencing structures are achieving that goal in some communities but not in others and the results are then masked or washed out. Overall however, there remains as significant amount of variation in these outcomes across the counties included in the analysis.