Research on social inequality in punishment has focused for a long time on the complex
relationship among race, ethnicity, and criminal sentencing, with a particular interest in the …

This study examines whether federal sentencing decisions are influenced by the
racial/ethnic composition of federal court districts. Multilevel models of individual cases …

Minority threat theory has been used to explain sentencing decisions, but rarely has the
theory's logic been assessed by examining changes in threat. Building on prior theoretical …

Scholars often have used the group threat thesis to explain why punitiveness varies across
places. This research regularly has found that punitiveness is harsher in places with a larger …

This article tests cross‐nationally the minority group threat thesis that public sentiments
toward repressive crime‐control policies reflect conflicted racial and ethnic relations. Using …

Prior studies of criminal sanctioning have focused almost exclusively on individual-level
predictors of sentencing outcomes. However, in recent years, scholars have begun to …

There has been considerable recent interest in understanding how changes within the racial
and ethnic landscape contribute to both the increased segregation of minority populations …

Research has recently shown a renewed interest in the effect of citizenship status on
sentencing outcomes. This line of investigation, however, is limited to the individual-level …

Objectives: The racial threat perspective argues that racial minorities are subjected to
greater punishment in places with large or growing minority populations. However, prior …

Although the social context of a court is often claimed to be important to understanding the
effect of the offender's race on punishment decisions, the links between context and racial …