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Unwarranted Disparity In Federal Sentencing

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From 1990 to 2010, the percentage of foreign-born individuals in the United States population has skyrocketed from 7.9% or (19,767,316 individuals) to 12.9% of the population (or 39,955,854 individuals), and has received attention from researchers seeking to examine the link between immigration and decisions made by government representatives and officials (Wu and D’Angelo, 2014, p. 58). In the article “Unwarranted Disparity in Federal Sentencing: Noncitizen Crime as a Social/Group Threat”, Jawjeong Wu and Jill M. D’Angelo (2014) broadened the scope of this field by being the first researchers to look into citizenship as a factor using multilevel analysis, with the goal of determining the variance in sentence differentials across federal districts …show more content…

The first aspect relates to the social control imposed by the upper class upon lower classes and those who do not integrate into society. The textbook classified this as the conflict view; the upper class uses the law as an instrument to maintain their own power while controlling and in the context of this article, confining and expelling those who violate long-held values and societal roles. Judges usually come from the upper class, and their sentences reflect their bias against those unlike them. Consequently, these sentences must be dispensed in a way to create a deterrent effect. While it is easy to ascribe these increased sentences as specific deterrence for offenders, a closer look reveals their true purpose of general deterrence. Non-citizen offenders in this study received longer prison terms when they lived in a federal district with a larger non-citizen population. Therefore, it can be inferred that these sentences were meant to send a message of firmness from the criminal justice system to the non-citizen community. Lengthy incarceration piled on top of possible deportation could be seen as a warning to the non-citizens of the district to stay in line and obey community standards (Siegel and Worrall, 2014; Wu and D’Angelo, …show more content…

There is clear evidence of social control, and specifically who it targets. Revelation of this evidence could be crucial to this field as the disparities may prompt research into methods by which to reduce this kind of discrimination and targeting in the judicial system. The criminal justice system in the United States requires impartial magistrates to uphold the standards of the constitution and state statutes, and if judges continue to target certain groups for increased punishment, then trust in the system will surely diminish. In addition, discretion clearly influenced sentencing patterns; therefore, one can logically infer that the criminal justice system is not one large entity, but a confederation of independent institutions that promote their own goals. As such, each individual unit merits research into its implementation of the criminal justice process so as to find the optimal criminal justice model (Siegel and Worrall, 2014; Wu and D’Angelo,

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