Judge Demographics and Their Impact on Sentencing of Drug Crimes

Aim: As drug use has increased, so has the number of drug cases going through the criminal justice system. With this increased number of cases in the justice system, judges are interacting more and more with these drug offenders. Pennsylvania is a state with presumptive sentencing guidelines in place to limit disparities in sentencing. However, with the stigma of drug use and the discretion of court actors helps to maintain certain biases that lead to sentencing disparities. In this study, we aim to address the impact of judge characteristics on sentencing outcomes for drug offenders. We hypothesize that minority judges and female judges will sentence drug offenders to less severe punishments and that judges from more rural counties will sentence drug offenders more severely.

Methods: We use the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing data from 2014-2019 to evaluate the relationship between a judge’s sex and race and sentence severity. Race/ethnicity was assessed as White, Non-White/minority for judges, and White, Black and Other for offenders.  We separate drug offenses into two categories: possession and dealing. We use multi-level models of regression. Logistic regression analyzes the likelihood drug offenders are sentenced to incarceration. Then we use OLS regression to examine how many months offenders were sentenced to incarceration for.

Results: White men constituted 74% of the judges that presided over drug cases from 2014-2019 (N=382). White women made up 18% (N=93) and the remaining 8% made up of minority men and women (N=44). Of the drug cases in PA between 2014-2019 68% (N=85,094) were for possession and the remaining 32% (N=40,927) were for dealing/distribution. White female and minority male judges were less likely to sentence drug possession offenders to incarceration compared white male judges. Sentence length also varies by judge demographics with white male judges giving longer sentences. Through multi-level models it is clear that sentence severity varies by individual judge significantly.

Conclusion: Through our analyses we find that white male judges are more likely to sentence drug offenders more harshly in both type and length than other judges. These findings help to establish the idea that judge characteristics and individual differences impact their discretion and decision-making when sentencing drug offenders and suggest a need for more comprehensive training on inherent biases for judges.