Reform effects: A study of the impact of case law and legislation on the sentencing of offenders in U.S. federal courts

Sentencing reform has guided criminal justice processing in federal courts since the passage of the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 (hereafter, SRA 1984). Despite changes in case law and legislation, the academic and political community has been seeking to understand the persistence of unwarranted disparities, based on extra-legal factors, in the sentencing of federal offenders. Although reform resulted in safeguards against unwarranted disparities through federal sentencing guidelines, the empirical literature continues to find that offenders with similar case characteristics receive different sentences based on personal factors like gender, race, age, and other such factors.;The theoretical literature of Max Weber offers some perspective. An application of Weber's bureaucratization theory suggests that the introduction of determinate sentencing via the SRA 1984, following a period of indeterminate sentencing that was based on individualized justice, precludes the State from effectively achieving equal justice in criminal justice processing. The persistence of unwarranted disparities based on extra-legal factors is the result of a not-so-seamless transition from substantive rationalization of law (indeterminate sentencing) to legal rationalization of law (determinate sentencing). Even as governments created and implemented new rules for equal justice via case law and legislation substantive rationalization of law would persist because administrators of justice would continue to rely on personal (extra-legal) factors in decision-making.;The current study examined the relationship between sentence outcomes and reform, and sought to examine the mechanisms through which unwarranted disparities based on extra-legal factors persisted. Findings reveal that extra-legal factors condition sentence outcomes, despite periods of reform meant to reduce disparities. In addition, the current study found that as new rules via case law and legislation are implemented, the hydraulic effect of discretionary power may occur between criminal justice agents for certain offenses, and that substantive rationalization of law persists in decision-making in federal courts.