
Estimating Gender Disparities in Federal Criminal Cases (2012) - fortran77
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2144002
======
djohnston
There's a prefessor at umich who studies this. I think I recall her saying
that gender disparities in sentencing actually dwarfs the racial disparities
that we hear about more often, but I can't find the link.

~~~
generalpass
> There's a prefessor at umich who studies this. I think I recall her saying
> that gender disparities in sentencing actually dwarfs the racial disparities
> that we hear about more often, but I can't find the link.

Is that Professor Sonja Starr?

[https://www.law.umich.edu/newsandinfo/features/Pages/starr_g...](https://www.law.umich.edu/newsandinfo/features/Pages/starr_gender_disparities.aspx)

> There are other studies that have shown gender disparity in criminal cases,
> but not as pronounced as Prof. Starr's findings. This is because she is
> looking at "a larger swath of the criminal justice process" in her analysis,
> she said. The paper states, "Existing studies have typically focused on
> single stages of the criminal process in isolation"—in particular, the
> judge's final sentencing decision. These studies compare actual sentencing
> outcomes after controlling for the recommended sentence associated with the
> defendant's ultimate conviction. The problem with this, Starr explains, is
> that "the key control variable is itself the result of a host of
> discretionary decisions made earlier in the justice process"—including
> prosecutors' charging and plea-bargaining decisions. Starr's research
> incorporates disparities found at those earlier stages, and finds that "more
> disparity is introduced at each phase of the justice process."

> After estimating the amount of disparity left unexplained by the arrest
> offense and other control variables, the paper explores "why these gaps
> exist—and, in particular, whether unobserved differences between men and
> women might justify them." Prof. Starr explores several potential mitigating
> factors, such as the "girlfriend theory" (that "[w]omen might be viewed
> as…mere accessories of their male romantic partners"), the role of women as
> primary caregivers to their children, and the "theory that female defendants
> receive leniency because they are more cooperative with the government."
> Although each of these theories found some support in the data, they did not
> appear capable of explaining anything close to the total disparity that
> Prof. Starr found.

I wish more people were open to hearing this sort of information.

