Gender and the Social Costs of Sentencing: An Analysis of Sentences Imposed on Male and Female Offenders in Three U.S. District Courts

Abstract

Disparity in the treatment of offenders involved in the criminal justice system has been the topic of a substantial amount of research over the past thirty years. Perhaps the most compelling evidence of disparity is found in the demographics of the inmate population in state and federal prisons throughout the United States. Most of those incarcerated in our nation's prisons are men, and the incarceration rates for blacks and Hispanics are substantially higher than the rate for whites.2 These disparities in rates of imprisonment, which have persisted for more than three decades, have led researchers to focus on the sentencing stage of the criminal justice process. 3 They also have led