Hispanic-White Sentencing Di¤erentials in the Federal Criminal Justice System

In the Federal criminal justice system (CJS), large Hispanic-White di¤erences in sentencing outcomes exist. We examine the malleability of factors that drive such di¤erences. To do so, we exploit 9-11 as an exogenously timed cue heightening the salience of insideroutsider divisions in American society, that might have impacted Hispanic defendants given long-standing interlinkages drawn between terrorism, border security and immigration. Exploiting linked administrative data covering criminal cases from arrest through to sentencing, we use a DiD research design based on defendants all of whom were arrested pre 9-11, but who came up for sentencing either side of 9-11. We ...nd that among those sentenced post 9-11, Hispanic-White judicial sentencing di¤erentials are exacerbated relative to these sentenced pre 9-11, while Black-White sentencing di¤erentials are una¤ected. Our data and research design allows us to further document the di¤erential treatment of Hispanic defendants by prosecutors in pre-sentencing stages of the CJS, such as with regards to the initial o¤ense charges set. We use decomposition analysis to show the vast majority of sentencing di¤erentials are driven by unobservables rather than sentencing prices on observables such as o¤ense type or criminal history. Furthermore, we document that in districts with a higher proportion of Hispanic judges, Hispanic-White di¤erentials are signi...cantly reduced, consistent with judicial biases in‡uencing decision making. Our results provide insights into the magnitude, channels and malleability of Hispanic-White sentencing di¤erentials in the professional and high-stakes Federal criminal justice system. JEL Classi...cation: J15, K14. We gratefully acknowledge ...nancial support from the Dr. Theo and Friedl Schoeller Research Center for Business and Society, and the ESRC Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy at IFS (grant number RES-544-28-5001). We thank Oriana Bandiera, Patrick Bayer, Daniel Bennett, Marianne Bertrand, Pietro Biroli, Dan Black, David Card, Kerwin Charles, Steve Cicala, Gordon Dahl, Brad DeLong, Ben Faber, Rick Hornbeck, Randi Hjalmarsson, Emir Kamenica, Kevin Lang, Neale Mahoney, Alan Manning, Olivier Marie, Ioana Marinescu, Michael Mueller-Smith, Emily Owens, Daniele Paserman, Steve Pischke, Steven Raphael, Jesse Rothstein, Anna Sandberg, Johannes Schmeider, Robert Topel and numerous seminar and conference participants for valuable comments. All errors remain our own. Author a¢liations and contacts: McConnell (Southampton, brendon.mcconnell@gmail.com); Rasul (University College London, i.rasul@ucl.ac.uk).