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Important and worrisome new multivariate analysis from USSC of post-Booker sentencing patterns

By Douglas A. Berman

I am pleased to see that the US Sentencing Commission has released this potent and important new sentencing data analysis, which is titled "Demographic Differences in Federal Sentencing Practices: An Update of the Booker Report?s Multivariate Analysis."  I am not pleased (though also not especially surprised) about what that analysis reveals about some post-Booker sentencing trends.  Specifically, according to this new USSC report: This report focused on three separate time periods which together spanned the time between May 1, 2003, and September 30, 2009.  The Commission found a correlation between the length of sentences imposed on some groups of offenders and the demographic characteristics of those offenders.  These differences were not present in all time periods under study and differed in magnitude in the time periods in which they were observed...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on March 12, 2010 (boomark / email).