Ethnicity and judges' sentencing decisions: Hispanic-black-white comparisons

This study, uses data on Pennsylvania sentencing practices to compare the sentence outcomes of white, black and Hispanic defendants. Besides the overall more lenient treatment of white defendants, our main finding is that Hispanic defendants are the defendant subgroup most at risk to receive the harshest penalty. This pattern is held across all comparisons-i.e., for both the in/out and term-length decisions and fur both drug and nondrug cases. These findings are consistent with the ''focal concerns'' framework on sentencing and with hypotheses drawn Stem the writings on prejudice and intergroup hostility suggesting that the specific social and historical contest facing Hispanic Americans will exacerbate perceptions of their cultural dissimilarity and the threat they pose.