Sex effects and sentencing: An analysis of the statistical literature

Abstract

We analyze the statistical literature on gender and sentencing to determine whether findings of “sex effects” favoring women are related to the statistical procedures used, to court contexts and sample composition, and to conceptual dimensions of the research. The unit of analysis (or case) is court data sets; our search identified 50 such cases, most of which analyze data from the 1970s. Half of these showed sex effects favoring women; one-quarter each showed mixed effects or no effects. These proportions remained constant when the sample was weighted by a quality score. In comparison with Kleck's review of race and sentencing, sex effects favoring women are far more frequent than race effects favoring whites. Results from the weighted sample suggest that sex effects are evident in both recent and older data sets and in both recent and earlier published work. They are more likely to emerge in analyses of felony offenses, in offenses prosecuted in felony courts, in courts in urban areas, and in the decision to incarcerate rather than in the length of an incarceration sentence. We discuss three ways of interpreting sex effects and propose an agenda for future research.