Role of Stereotypes, Threat, and Public Attitudes on the Federal Sentencing of Hispanic Non-Citizens

The general purpose of this research is to determine if there are case-level, individual, and/or social factors that have a differential impact on the federal criminal sentencing of Hispanic non-citizen offenders, compared to white citizens. Drawing on focal concerns and minority threat theories, hierarchical linear and generalized linear models are estimated to assess case, defendant, and district level effects on the federal sentencing outcomes for a large sample of defendants (N=63,753) convicted in 2008. The contextual factors of interest include the immigration caseload of the district, minority population sizes, and public attitudes on specific immigration policies. The results indicate that the average likelihood of incarceration and sentence length significantly varies across these court locations. While case and defendant-level characteristics have strong direct impacts on these outcomes, the findings also indicate that district characteristics also exert significant direct and indirect effects. These effects were strongest in the sentence length models. Notably, the minority compositions for the foreign-born and Hispanic populations have different effects on the average sentence lengths across districts. Anti-immigration attitudes were also positively related to sentence length. Overall, this work provides a more nuanced explanation of the federal sentencing disparities that exist for Hispanic non-citizens, which merit greater attention. It also highlights the need for current sentencing theory and public policy to be further developed in order to adequately address the complex and changing impacts on punishment decisions across place.