Excessive Uniformity in Federal Drug Sentencing |
| |
Authors: | Eric L Sevigny |
| |
Institution: | (1) Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of South Carolina, 1305 Greene Street, Columbia, SC 29208, USA |
| |
Abstract: | The ideal of fair and proportionate punishment was a major impetus for federal sentencing reform. Observers of the current
federal drug sentencing regime contend that the sentencing guidelines and mandatory minimums lead to the problem of “excessive
uniformity” in which offenders of widely differing culpability receive similar sentences due to the dominance of drug quantity
as a sentencing factor. This study investigates this phenomenon using the 1997 Survey of Inmates in Federal Correctional Facilities.
Controlling for relevant offense, offender, and case processing variables, the analysis finds that the quantity-driven sentencing
fails to account for important differences in offender culpability—resulting in excessively uniform sentences for offenders
with highly dissimilar roles in the offense. The main policy implication of this research is that the central, organizing
role of drug quantity in federal drug sentencing needs to be rethought. Indeed, effectively dealing with the problem of excessive
uniformity will likely require the wholesale restructuring of how federal sentences for drug offenders are determined.
|
| |
Keywords: | Excessive uniformity Drug sentencing Survey of Inmates in Federal Correctional Facilities Truncated regression |
本文献已被 SpringerLink 等数据库收录! |
|