Economic Inequality and Discrimination in Sentencing

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Abstract
This paper integrates two separate research traditions that link inequality and official responses to crime. It focuses on inequality both as a property of communities where punishment occurs and as a property of punished offenders. Community inequality is conceptualized as a context that conditions differential treatment based on offender attributes and behavior. The analysis of data from Georgia supports such a conceptualization. Inequality tends to foster disproportionately harsher punishment of more dangerous and socially disadvantaged offenders. There are exceptions to these general trends, however. Most notably, white rather than black offenders are at a disadvantage in counties with high racial income inequality and large black populations. Taken as a whole, the results argue for greater attentiveness to the economic context within which sentencing occurs, and for research strategies that can specify the intervening mechanisms through which community inequality operates.

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