Sentencing Transferred Juveniles in the Adult Criminal Court

Abstract

Much prior research has demonstrated that race and ethnicity are associated with harsher punishment outcomes among adult defendants in the criminal court. However, few studies have explored these disparities in the sentencing of juvenile offenders who have been transferred to the adult court, and this research has reported conflicting findings. Moreover, the ways in which offenders’ race and ethnicity may interact with their sex, age, and offense type have yet to be explored among this population. Analysis of defendants sentenced in Florida (N = 30,913) reveals that Black transferred juveniles are more likely to be sentenced to jail or prison and are given longer prison sentences than Whites, but Hispanic youth are only penalized in the sentence to jail. Interaction analyses suggest that Black males are sentenced particularly harshly regardless of age, and the effects of race and ethnicity are conditioned by a violent, sex, or drug offense.

Keywords

race and ethnicity juvenile transfer adult court sentencing

Between the mid-1980s and early 1990s, the size of the American youth population expanded, and juvenile crime rates across the United States began to increase (Zimring, 1998).¹ In response to these trends and the public concern they provoked, policy makers enacted a variety of legislative changes designed to “get tough” on juvenile offenders (Butts & Mitchell, 2000; Mears, 2002; Singer, 1997). One of the most notable and widespread of these reforms was the expansion of policies that facilitate the transfer of youth offenders from the juvenile court to the adult criminal court for prosecution and sentencing (Myers, 2005; Snyder & Sickmund, 2006). Over the past 30 years, transfer to adult court has become a common feature of juvenile justice practice, and all 50 states have either implemented or revised transfer legislation (Griffin, Addie, Adams, & Firestine, 2011; Puzzanchera & Addie, 2014).²

In light of the punitive changes in criminal justice policy (Garland, 2001; Pratt, 1998; Tonry, 1995), an abundance of recent research has found evidence of unwarranted racial and ethnic disparities in adult court sentencing. Specifically, scholars have documented that Black and Hispanic defendants are treated more harshly than Whites across sentencing outcomes, including decisions to incarcerate (Bales & Piquero, 2012; Doerner & Demuth, 2010), sentence length (Steen, Engen, & Gainey, 2005; Steffensmeier & Demuth, 2001), and punitive sentencing guideline departures (Johnson, 2003; Kramer & Ulmer, 2002). To explain these findings, it has been theorized that judges rely on attributional stereotypes in the process of sentencing (Albonetti, 1991; Bridges & Steen, 1998), and certain offender characteristics, such as race and ethnicity, may indicate that a defendant is more blameworthy or poses a particular risk to public safety (Steffensmeier, Ulmer, & Kramer, 1998).

Despite the extensiveness of this body of theoretical and empirical work on adult offenders, the role of race and ethnicity in sentencing among juvenile offenders who have been transferred to the adult court has received little research attention, and the few extant studies have reported contradictory findings (Jordan & Freiburger, 2010; Kupchik, 2006; Kurlychek & Johnson, 2004). In addition, the conditional effects of other factors on race and ethnicity in the sentencing of transferred youth, such as age, sex, and offense type, have received even less consideration. The lack of research attention to the interactive effects of race and ethnicity in the punishment of transfers is notable in light of the compelling arguments made by many sentencing scholars regarding the critical importance of examining race and ethnicity in relation to other legal and extralegal factors (Doerner & Demuth, 2010; Steffensmeier & Demuth, 2001; Steffensmeier et al., 1998; Warren, Chiricos, & Bales, 2012).

The present research is motivated by the notion that juvenile offenders who are transferred to the adult criminal court represent a conceptually unique subgroup of offenders, considered by the legal system to be children by age but adults by virtue of the seriousness of their offenses or adjudication records (Bishop, Frazier, Lanza-Kaduce, & Winner, 1996; Myers, 2005). While youthfulness might be considered as a mitigating factor in sentencing because it can denote reduced culpability (Kupchik, 2006), some evidence indicates that juvenile status in the adult court potentially implies an increased level of dangerousness (Jordan, 2014; Kurlychek & Johnson, 2004, 2010). Because transferred juveniles are likely perceived as representing an “atypical” class of offenders (Johnson & Kurlychek, 2012, p. 530), court actors may be inclined to evaluate them differently than other criminal defendants. Therefore, transferred youth should be considered an exceptional population and deserving of special empirical examination.

The current study makes use of data from Florida involving 30,913 transferred juveniles who were sentenced in adult criminal court for felony crimes. In our analyses of these defendants, we first investigate whether Black and Hispanic transferred youth are more likely than White transfers to be sentenced to prison or jail rather than community supervision. Second, among those sentenced to prison, we examine whether Black and Hispanic transfers receive longer prison sentences than Whites. Next, we test whether the combined effects of age, sex, and either race or ethnicity have distinctive consequences for sentence type and prison sentence length. Finally, we test whether the effects of race and ethnicity on sentence severity are conditional upon offense type. Before describing our methodology and findings in detail, we first review the prior research on racial and ethnic disparities in criminal court sanctioning as well as the limited body of work on race, ethnicity, and the sentencing of transferred juveniles. We then discuss the relevant theoretical perspectives that may explain the relationship between race/ethnicity and the sentencing of transferred cases.

Prior Research on Race, Ethnicity, and Punishment

Many studies have examined unwarranted disparities between racial groups in criminal court sentencing. According to Baumer (2013, p. 235), the primary conclusion to be drawn from this literature is that “there are substantial racial disparities in the application of law in the USA” (see also Mitchell, 2005; Pratt, 1998). For instance, Spohn and Holleran (2000) reported that young Black and Hispanic males received harsher sentences than older offenders, Whites, and females. Using data from Florida, Bales and Piquero’s (2012) research showed that both Black and Hispanic adults were more likely than Whites to receive an incarceration sentence. Other research has found that Black offenders receive harsher sentences than both Whites and Hispanics (Barnes & Kingsnorth, 1996; Demuth & Steffensmeier, 2004; Feldmeyer, Warren, Siennick, & Neptune, 2015; Steffensmeier & Demuth, 2006; Steffensmeier et al., 1998) and that these associations are often conditional upon other factors (Bushway & Piehl, 2001; Doerner & Demuth, 2010; Steen et al., 2005; Warren et al., 2012). Some studies, however, have reported that Hispanic adult offenders are punished more harshly than both Blacks and Whites, although Blacks are typically sentenced more severely than Whites (Johnson, 2003; Kramer & Ulmer, 2002; Steffensmeier & Demuth, 2000, 2001).

Despite the abundance of research investigating racial and ethnic disparities in criminal court sentencing, one line of inquiry that remains surprisingly underdeveloped is the impact of race and ethnicity on the sentencing of transferred juveniles in the adult court. Only two studies (Howell & Hutto, 2012; Jordan & Freiburger, 2010) have made race and ethnicity the primary focus of analysis in research on sentencing outcomes for juveniles transferred to adult court, and both engage the same data. This relative lack of empirical attention to race, ethnicity, and sentencing of transferred juveniles is surprising, given that perceptions of blameworthiness and dangerousness associated with Black and Hispanic youth have been theorized as centrally salient in the proliferation of transfer laws and other punitive juvenile justice reforms (Bishop, 2005; Bortner, Zatz, & Hawkins, 2000; Feld, 1999, 2003).

With 1998 data from 19 of the largest counties in the United States, Jordan and Freiburger (2010) found that Black juveniles convicted in adult court were less likely than Whites to receive a probation as opposed to a jail sentence and more likely to receive a prison as opposed to jail sentence. Hispanic ethnicity was irrelevant for defendants with regard to probation but increased the likelihood of receiving a prison sentence compared to White youth. Further, Black defendants who had previous contact with the juvenile justice system, were released from jail prior to trial, or were transferred by legislative waiver were more likely to receive a prison as opposed to a jail sentence. Being Black or Hispanic and from the Northeast reduced the chances of that outcome. Making use of the same data, Howell and Hutto (2012) reported that Black defendants were less likely than Whites to receive probation and more likely to be sentenced to jail time. Race was irrelevant with regard to restitution as an outcome. Hispanic ethnicity increased the prospects of a jail sentence but had no statistical relevance for sentences to probation or restitution.

Several studies have included race and/or ethnicity as covariates in sentencing research that included juvenile transfers, but these findings have been contradictory. McNulty’s (1996) analysis of 472 juveniles transferred to Arizona adult court in 1994 found that convicted Black and Hispanic defendants were significantly more likely to receive an incarceration sentence (prison or jail) and less likely to be sentenced to probation. Kurlychek and Johnson (2004) found that neither race nor Hispanic ethnicity were significant in estimates of sentencing severity (0–240 months) for juvenile transfers to adult courts in Pennsylvania from 1997 to 1999. An analysis of 16-year-old defendants in New York City criminal courts during 1992–1993 also found that neither race nor Latino ethnicity was significant in regression models of incarceration outcomes (Kupchik, 2006). Carmichael (2010) found that while both race and Hispanic ethnicity were not significant in estimates of sentence length for a sample of juveniles convicted in adult courts during the period of 1983–2001, Black defendants convicted of murder received significantly shorter sentences than their White counterparts.

In addition to providing further insight into an underdeveloped area with conflicting findings, the present research builds upon prior work on the relationship between race, ethnicity, and the sentencing of transferred juveniles in several ways. In particular, it is the first study of transfers to examine how race and ethnicity may interact with age and sex to affect either sentence type or prison sentence length. Second, in the context of adult court sentencing of transferred juveniles, the present study is only the second to consider the potential interaction of race and ethnicity with type of crime in estimates of sentencing outcomes, and it is the first to do so with crime types besides murder. Finally, the current study engages these issues using data more recent than 2001.

Theoretical Accounts of Sentencing Disparities

Race, Ethnicity, and Sentencing

Scholars have articulated a number of hypothesized expectations for the relationship between race/ethnicity and criminal court sentencing outcomes. Albonetti’s (1991) causal attribution theory hinges on the notion that court actors may engage racialized perceptions of criminal threat in sentencing decisions. According to this perspective, judges operate in a context of “bounded rationality” and, in sentencing, work to achieve the most optimal outcomes given limits on time and resources. Although judges attempt to assess defendants’ likelihood of future offending, the accuracy of their evaluations is constrained given the incomplete information available to them. Thus, in a context of uncertainty, court actors can rely on attributional stereotypes or “cognitive heuristics” (Kahneman, 2011) that relate the extralegal characteristics of offenders to their relative likelihood of recidivism (see also Farrell & Holmes, 1991). As a result of the engagement of these stereotyped attributions, judges may view Black and Hispanic defendants as threatening and give them harsher sentences than Whites.

Building on Albonetti’s (1991) theory, the focal concerns perspective (Steffensmeier et al., 1998) likewise hypothesizes links between race/ethnicity and judicial outcomes. This approach posits that there are three specific considerations which influence the decision-making processes of court actors: the blameworthiness of the offender, protection of the community, and practical constraints and consequences. Because the information accessible to judges about offenders is limited, judges may employ attributional stereotypes or cognitive heuristics, including those involving race and ethnicity, when engaging the focal concerns. Specifically, defendants whom judges identify as more blameworthy or culpable may be viewed as deserving retributive punishments, and these judgments which can be informed by attributions related to defendants’ race and ethnicity (Doerner & Demuth, 2010; Steffensmeier & Demuth, 2006). The goal of protection of the community primarily emphasizes evaluations of offenders’ future criminality and their potential danger to the community upon release, which can likewise be conflated with race, ethnicity, and other factors (Steen et al., 2005; Steffensmeier & Demuth, 2000, 2001). Finally, judges are concerned with the practical constraints and consequences of sentencing decisions, and their assessments of defendants’ risk of reoffending, which can be influenced by stereotyped attributions regarding race and ethnicity, are often implicitly tied to the standing of the court in the community (Johnson, 2003).

Steffensmeier, Ulmer, and Kramer (1998) theorize that, due to the absence of complete information about cases and defendants, judges can rely on “perceptual shorthand” to evaluate the blameworthiness and dangerousness of defendants, and this shorthand can be linked to defendants’ extralegal characteristics, especially race and ethnicity (see also Bridges & Steen, 1998). In particular, Steffensmeier et al. (1998, p. 787) argue that young Black males may be perceived as “dangerous, committed to street life, and less reformable than women and older offenders.” These anticipated associations between race and criminal threat likely extend to Hispanic offenders as well. Indeed, Steffensmeier and Demuth (2000, p. 725) argue that the social context of Hispanic immigration “may exacerbate perceptions of their cultural dissimilarity and the ‘threat’ they pose in ways that contribute to their harsher treatment in the criminal courts.” In addition, because offender recidivism can affect the court’s community standing, attributions connecting race/ethnicity and reoffending may indirectly inform judges’ assessments of practical concerns and constraints.

The connection between race/ethnicity and punishment severity may be particularly relevant for the population of youth who have been transferred to the adult court. It has been argued that recent changes to the landscape of juvenile and criminal justice policy, including the proliferation of the practice of transfer, have been driven, in part, by racialized perceptions of juvenile delinquency (Bortner et al., 2000; Feld, 2003; Jackson & Pabon, 2000). According to Feld (1999, p. 8), a primary impetus behind the punitive transformation of the juvenile court was a desire to control “other people’s children.” The characterization of serious youth offenders as “juvenile superpredators,” implicitly referring to Black urban youth, was commonly used among legislators in the 1990s to garner public support for punitive measures (Nunn, 2002; Zimring, 1998). In addition, it has been argued that the common identification of Hispanic youth as gang members contributed to the expansion of get tough policies as well (Holmes, Smith, Freng, & Munoz, 2008; Lane & Meeker, 2000). If these assessments are correct and recent punitive policy shifts were indeed motivated, in part, by racialized perceptions of juvenile offending, it would not be surprising if racial and ethnic disparities were also present in the sentencing of the unique population of youth who have been transferred to the adult court.

The Importance of Sex, Age, and Offense Type

In addition to exerting direct effects on sentence severity, it is theoretically expected that race and ethnicity may interact with offenders’ sex and age. The focal concerns perspective suggests that male defendants, especially young males, may be perceived among criminal court actors as more blameworthy and dangerous than females and that the aggravating effects of being male in sentencing will potentially condition those of race and ethnicity (Steffensmeier et al., 1998; Warren et al., 2012). In addition, not only are younger adult offenders (i.e., 18- to 29-year-olds) often sentenced more harshly than older adults, but these effects are especially strong among Blacks and Hispanics (Doerner & Demuth, 2010; Steffensmeier & Demuth, 2001, 2006). Similarly, older juveniles (i.e., 16- and 17-year-olds) within the juvenile justice system, particularly males, are typically given harsher dispositions likely because they are viewed as more culpable and less reformable than younger adolescents (Leiber & Johnson, 2008; Mears et al., 2014). Therefore, given the theoretical relevance of sex and age for informing court actors’ perceptions of offenders’ blameworthiness and dangerousness, it is possible that attributions regarding race and ethnicity may interact with those related to sex and age and subsequently affect sentencing outcomes. The present study is the first to examine this possibility among the unique population of juveniles transferred to the adult court.

There is also a reasonable rationale for expecting that race and ethnicity effects in the sentencing of transfers will be conditioned by primary offense type. The commonly used “superpredator” terminology of the 1990s directly identified violent youth crime to be of primary importance (Feld, 2003; Myers, 2005; Zimring, 1998). Further, during this decade, there was popular concern that the violence of the inner cities was “spreading out of the ghetto into middle America” (Chiricos, 1996, p. 32). Because of these “public and political linkages” (Feld, 1999, p. 7) between race and youth violence, it is conceivable that Black and Hispanic transfers will be punished especially harshly for violent offenses. Alternatively, in light of the “crack epidemic” of the 1980s and its lasting association with “disadvantaged minority residents of the inner cities” (Tonry, 1995, p. 94), drug crimes might be especially salient for minority youth. Indeed, Steffensmeier and Demuth (2001, p. 152) contend that “drug (especially cocaine) distribution and sales in particular are identified with Black-dominated gangs on the one hand and with Hispanic traffickers on the other.” Due to these connections between drug offenses and race and ethnicity, it is also possible that the effects of race and ethnicity on the sentencing of transferred juveniles in adult court will be especially pronounced for drug crimes. Despite these theoretical developments connecting race and crime type, no prior study of transferred juveniles has explored the conditional effects of race on sentence severity across offense categories.

On the basis of the foregoing considerations, this study addresses four research questions related to the role of race and ethnicity in the sentencing of transferred juveniles. First, among transferred juveniles in the adult court, are there independent, direct effects of being Black or Hispanic on the likelihood of receiving a sentence to jail or prison relative to supervision? Second, if sentenced to prison, do Black and Hispanic transferred juveniles receive longer prison sentences than Whites? Third, do race and ethnicity interact with sex and age to affect sentence severity? Finally, are the effects of being Black or Hispanic on sentence type and length conditioned by type of primary offense for which the defendant is sentenced?

Data and Method

We make use of data from the population of transferred youth who were sentenced for felony offenses in Florida between 1995 and 2006. The age of juvenile justice exclusion in Florida is 18 years old, so our population of transferred juveniles is defined as all offenders who were age 17 or younger at the time of offense. The data for this study originated from the Florida Sentencing Guidelines database, which is maintained by the Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC). The guidelines database capture information on all felons who were convicted in a Florida criminal court in the given time frame and subsequently sentenced under the state’s sentencing guidelines. These data were combined with data from FDOC’s Offender Based Information System (OBIS) to obtain other offender- and offense-related characteristics. The final study population consists of 30,913 transferred juveniles, 9,591 of whom were sentenced to prison. The data are hierarchical in structure, and the individual cases are nested within Florida’s 20 judicial circuits. The descriptive statistics are shown in Table 1.

Table 1.

Descriptive Statistics: Transferred Juvenile Felony Cases Sentenced in Florida, 1995–2006.

Variables	Frequency	%	Mean	SD	Range
Dependent variables
Sentence type
Supervision	17,619	57.00			0–1
Jail	3,703	11.98			0–1
Prison	9,591	31.03			0–1
Prison sentence length (ln)			3.80	.82	2.48–6.39
Independent variables
Race/ethnicity
Black	17,640	57.06			0–1
Hispanic	3,119	10.09			0–1
White	10,154	32.85			0–1
Sex
Male	28,784	93.11			0–1
Female	2,129	6.89			0–1
Age at offense			16.46	.79	8–17
Mode of conviction
Trial	649	2.10			0–1
Plea	30,264	97.90			0–1
Primary offense type
Violent offense	10,843	35.08			0–1
Sex offense	874	2.83			0–1
Property offense	11,266	36.44			0–1
Drug offense	5,801	18.77			0–1
Other offense	2,129	6.89			0–1
Case seriousness (ln)			3.95	.75	1.38–6.91
Prior prison commitments			0.06	.27	0–6
Prior supervision violations			0.15	.42	0–8

Note. N = 30,913. Sentencing year dummies are not displayed.

Dependent Variables

Our first dependent variable is a sentence to prison or jail versus supervision. While in many sentencing studies, prison and jail sentences are collapsed into a single construct of incarceration, some scholars have made compelling cases against the use of the total incarceration measure (Harrington & Spohn, 2007; Holleran & Spohn, 2004). Their rationales hinge on the notion that a sentence to local jail is not punitive to the same degree as a state prison sentence. Prison sentences are clearly reserved for those offenders deemed to be the most dangerous or threatening, while a sentence to jail serves as an intermediate sanction between supervision and prison. As a result, the total incarceration measure does not accurately reflect the sentencing options available to judges. Among our population of transfers, we recognize that not only is a prison sentence an inherently more punitive response, but local jail is often used as an administrative sanction, with many offenders credited for time served upon sentencing and subsequently released.³ In light of these issues, the current study follows the example of prior research (Feldmeyer et al., 2015; Warren et al., 2012) and uses a trichotomous dependent variable of sentence type, with options including supervision (= 1), jail (= 2), or prison (= 3). Supervision used as the reference outcome in the multinomial logistic regression models.⁴

We also employ a measure of prison sentence length. As noted above, because most transfers sentenced to jail served no additional incarceration term, jail sentence length is likewise an unreliable indicator of a punitive sentencing outcome. Thus, prison sentence length is used as the second outcome of interest. The values of prison sentence length reflect the number of months to which an imprisoned defendant was sentenced, which range from 12 to 600 months. Because the distribution is heavily skewed, all analyses utilize a natural log transformation, which approximately normalizes the distribution of the variable. Regression coefficients using this transformed variable can be interpreted as the percentage changes in prison sentence length due to 1-unit increases in the independent variable.

Independent Variables

The independent variables of primary interest are defendant race and ethnicity, which are measured using three dichotomous variables. FDOC’s OBIS database was used to determine the race and ethnicity of the offenders. Black is operationalized as Black/non-Hispanic (= 1), and Hispanics are coded as 1 if the race or ethnicity variable in the OBIS data identified the case as such. A supplementary method of identifying whether an offender is Hispanic involved comparing the surnames of offenders not originally designated as Hispanic in OBIS data with the U.S. Census list of Hispanic surnames (see Word & Perkins, 1996). Offenders whose last names are on this list of surnames are also coded as Hispanic. White offenders are identified by whether the case is coded as White/non-Hispanic in the OBIS database (= 1). Due to their extremely small sample size (less than 1%), Asians, Native Americans, and Pacific Islanders are excluded from the data. White is used as the reference category in the analyses.

In addition to race and ethnicity, we include measures of other extralegal factors as well. Sex is measured with a dummy variable with males coded as 1. The age in years of the defendant at the time of offense is captured in the guidelines data. In light of the prior theory and research, these two factors are expected to interact with race and ethnicity to affect sentencing outcomes (Doerner & Demuth, 2010; Steffensmeier et al., 1998). To assess the effects of the “trial penalty,” which can be correlated with race and exerts substantial effects on sentencing outcomes (Johnson, 2003), we use a dummy variable that indicates if a defendant had been convicted through a trial (= 1) or a plea bargain.

We likewise include a number of other variables that account for legally relevant case characteristics and which are often correlated with race and ethnicity (Steffensmeier & Demuth, 2000, 2001; Warren et al., 2012). The first is a measure of primary offense type, which involves five dummy variables: violent offense, sex offense, property offense, drug offense, and other offense. Property offense is used as the reference category. We also employ a comprehensive case seriousness score, which is the total number of sentencing guidelines points assigned to a particular case. This measure includes the primary offense points as well as any additional offense seriousness points, enhancement points, and prior record points as scored by the sentencing guidelines. Enhancement points are applied at the discretion of the judge if the case involves certain aggravating factors, including domestic violence, gang participation, the use of certain weapons, or threats to law enforcement. Prior record points are assigned to defendants based on the number and severity of all previous convictions in any state, federal, military, or foreign court. The sum of these scores for each case creates one of the most comprehensive and discriminating measures of legally relevant sentencing factors to be employed in sentencing research. To account for skewness, a natural log transformation of this variable is used.

In addition to the comprehensive case seriousness measure, which strongly engages prior record, we use two other indicators of prior involvement in the criminal justice system, which may confound the relationship between race/ethnicity and sentencing outcomes. The number of prior prison commitments reflects the number of times an offender had been previously sentenced to an adult prison. The number of prior supervision violations captures the number of times an individual had violated the terms of a previous community supervision sentence. An examination of the variance inflation factor values indicated that collinearity among the measures offense type, case seriousness, and prior record is not of concern in these analyses.

Finally, to account for possible changes in both transfer legislation and adult court sentencing practices over the 12-year period, we follow the example of prior research (e.g., Demuth & Steffensmeier, 2004; Steffensmeier & Demuth, 2006) and use dummy variables for the year in which each offender was sentenced.

Analytic Strategy

Due to the hierarchical structure of the data, the present study employs a multilevel analytical strategy to evaluate the effects of race and ethnicity on sentence type and prison sentence length. In each of the regression models, the individual cases are treated as nested within 20 judicial circuits. Although no Level 2 predictors are included in the analyses, multilevel modeling is more useful than ordinary regression in this research context because it produces corrected standard errors and more accurate parameter estimates.

The analyses proceed as follows. First, we begin by examining our first multivariate model, which estimates a hierarchical multinomial logistic regression equation to assess the direct effects of race and ethnicity on the likelihood of receiving a jail sentence or prison sentence relative to a sentence to supervision. Next, we estimate a hierarchical linear regression model to predict prison sentence length among the subpopulation of youth who were sentenced to prison. Following our estimations of the main effects models, we partition the population by combinations of race and ethnicity with sex and age (8- to 15-year-olds vs. 16- to 17-year-olds) and examine the joint effects on sentence severity.⁵ Finally, to explore the extent to which the effects of race and ethnicity on sentence severity are conditioned by primary offense type, we estimate regression equations for each crime type and then compare the race and ethnicity coefficients in the violent, sex, drug, and other offense models to those of the corresponding property offense model using two-tailed z-tests (Paternoster, Brame, Mazerolle, & Piquero, 1998).

One concern with models predicting sentence length is that, because the subset of defendants who are sentenced to prison is nonrandom, the regression estimates may be biased due to sample selection effects (Bushway, Johnson, & Slocum, 2007). One method commonly used to correct for selection bias is the calculation of the hazard rate, which is estimated using the Heckman correction procedure. However, Bushway, Johnson, and Slocum (2007) note that, in the absence of useful exclusion restrictions, the use of the correction term to account for selection often introduces bias into the model due to high levels of collinearity between the correction term and predictors of sentence length. We examined models both with and without the Heckman correction and found that the inclusion of the hazard term indeed resulted in a condition index that far exceeded the recommended thresholds. Therefore, we report only the uncorrected sentence length models with the caveat that the estimates are likely affected to some extent by sample selection bias.

Findings

Unconditional Models

To examine whether sentence type and prison sentence length vary by judicial circuit, we first estimate two unconditional hierarchical models (not displayed). The first model shows that there is significant variation in sentence type across circuits (χ² = 426.16, p < .001), with a variance component of .079 and an intraclass correlation (ICC) of .026. This indicates that 2.6% of the variation in sentence type is attributable only to between-circuit differences. The unconditional sentence length model likewise reveals that there is significant variation in prison sentence length across circuits (χ² = 113.21, p < .001). The variance component is .814 and the ICC is .198, meaning that approximately 19.8% of the variation in prison sentence length is due to variation between circuits. Thus, there is evidence that both sentencing outcomes vary significantly across clusters and that a multilevel modeling strategy is appropriate.

Direct Effects of Race and Ethnicity

To address our first research question concerning whether Black or Hispanic transferred juveniles are more likely to receive a sentence to prison than comparable Whites, we examine the direct effects of race and ethnicity using hierarchical multinomial logistic regression. Displayed in Model 1 in Table 2 are the magnitudes of the independent effects of the covariates on the likelihood of a jail or prison sentence relative to supervision.

Table 2.

Multilevel Regressions of Sentence Type and Prison Sentence Length (ln).

	Model 1: Multinomial Logistic Regression				Model 2: Linear Regression
	Jail Versus Supervision		Prison Versus Supervision		Prison Sentence Length (ln)
	b (SE)	Odds	b (SE)	Odds	b (SE)
Variables
Intercept	−0.256 (0.471)	—	−10.188*** (0.399)	—	−0.287* (0.132)
Black	0.854*** (0.047)	2.349	0.549*** (0.038)	1.731	0.078*** (0.014)
Hispanic	0.325*** (0.080)	1.384	0.021 (0.059)	1.021	0.037 (0.022)
Male	0.600*** (0.083)	1.822	0.982*** (0.076)	2.669	0.089** (0.031)
Age at offense	−0.100*** (0.025)	0.904	−0.096*** (0.020)	0.908	0.000 (0.006)
Trial	−0.530 (0.271)	0.588	1.386*** (0.129)	3.998	0.741*** (0.027)
Violent offense	0.027 (0.055)	1.027	0.143*** (0.038)	1.153	0.142*** (0.014)
Sex offense	−1.075*** (0.237)	0.341	−1.355*** (0.091)	0.257	−0.019 (0.031)
Drug offense	0.554*** (0.049)	1.740	−0.036 (0.055)	0.964	−0.093*** (0.023)
Other offense	0.399*** (0.069)	1.490	0.182* (0.073)	1.199	0.015 (0.030)
Case seriousness (ln)	−0.301*** (0.035)	0.740	2.377*** (0.034)	10.772	0.848*** (0.011)
Prior prison commitments	1.069*** (0.096)	2.912	1.976*** (0.082)	7.213	0.121*** (0.015)
Prior supervision violations	1.449*** (0.043)	4.258	1.201*** (0.043)	3.323	0.003 (0.012)
Random effects
Variance component	0.157 (0.052)				0.575 (0.004)
ICC	0.046				0.149
Log likelihood	−21,056.01				−8,333.57
n	30,913				9,591

Note. Cases are nested within 20 judicial circuits. White, female, plea, and property offense are used as the reference categories. Sentencing year dummies are not displayed. ICC = intraclass correlation.

*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

The results of the jail versus supervision comparison indicate that, independent of the other legal and extralegal factors included in the model, Black and Hispanic transfers are significantly more likely than Whites to receive a sentence to jail in adult court. Specifically, the odds of receiving a jail sentence versus a supervision sentence are 2.349 times greater for Blacks than for Whites (b = .854), and for Hispanics, the odds are 1.384 greater than for Whites (b = .325). Extralegal variables apart from race and ethnicity are salient predictors of sentence severity as well, with males and younger offenders more likely than females and older offenders to receive a sentence to jail. In addition, those offenders whose cases are more serious are less likely to receive a jail sentence relative to a supervision sentence and those who have more prior prison commitments and supervision violations are more likely to receive jail sentences. A drug or “other” offense is positively predictive of a jail sentence relative to supervision, while a sexual offense is negatively associated with a sentence to jail.

The findings from the prison versus supervision comparison reveal that odds of receiving a prison sentence are 1.731 greater for Blacks than for Whites, net of the controls (b = .549). However, the positive effect of Hispanic ethnicity on the likelihood of a prison sentence (b = .021) is nonsignificant. Many of the covariates in this comparison exert similar effects as in the jail versus supervision comparison, but there are some notable differences. Specifically, trial cases and violent offenses are significantly positively associated with a prison sentence relative to a sentence to supervision, and a drug offense has a nonsignificant negative effect in this comparison. In addition, case seriousness exerts a substantial positive effect on the likelihood of receiving a prison sentence.

Corresponding with our second research question, the second model in Table 2 shows the results from the hierarchical linear regression estimates of prison sentence length. The findings from this equation indicate that, after accounting for the available covariates, Black offenders are given prison sentences that are 7.8% longer than Whites (b = .078). While being Hispanic is also positively associated with prison sentence length (b = .037), the effect does not achieve statistical significance. As in the multinomial comparison predicting a sentence to prison versus supervision, the case seriousness score and the number of prior prison commitments are both positively predictive of prison sentence length. Additionally, defendants convicted of violent offenses receive longer sentences than property offenders, while convictions for drug offenses receive shorter prison sentences. Males and defendants convicted through a trial receive significantly longer prison sentences. Overall, these two models indicate that Black transferred juveniles are treated more harshly than Whites in both stages of the sentencing process, while Hispanics are only penalized in the decision to sentence to prison.

Interactive Effects of Race/Ethnicity, Sex, and Age

To address our third research question regarding the conditional effects of sex and age on those of race and ethnicity, presented in Table 3 are the regression models estimating sentence type and prison sentence length for 11 categories of race/ethnicity, sex, and age. Black males ages 8–15 are used as the reference category. Both these models include controls for all the covariates shown in Table 2, although for the purposes of parsimony, the coefficients are not displayed. As shown in the first comparison of Model 1, which estimates the likelihood of a sentence to jail relative to supervision, the findings indicate that Black males and younger females are the most likely to receive a sentence to jail. Indeed, while all other categories are negatively associated with a prison sentence relative to younger Black males (ages 8–15), for older Black males (ages 16–17) and all younger females (ages 8–15), the coefficients fail to achieve statistical significance. In contrast, however, the prison versus supervision comparison shows that Black males of both age-groups are the most likely to receive this sanction. Females are less likely than males to receive a sentence to prison regardless of race, ethnicity, and age. Thus, even after controlling for legally relevant factors, the findings suggest that transferred juveniles who are Black males are punished more harshly than other groups.

Table 3.

Multilevel Regressions of Sentence Type and Prison Sentence Length (ln) for Categories of Race/Ethnicity, Sex, and Age.

	Model 1: Multinomial Logistic Regression				Model 2: Linear Regression
	Jail Versus Supervision		Prison Versus Supervision		Prison Sentence Length (ln)
	b (SE)	Odds	b (SE)	Odds	b (SE)
Variables
Black males, 8–15	—	—	—	—	—
Hispanic males, 8–15	−0.568* (0.248)	0.566	−0.627*** (0.154)	0.534	−0.021 (0.051)
White males, 8–15	−0.980*** (0.175)	0.375	−0.541*** (0.110)	0.582	−0.047 (0.037)
Black males, 16–17	−0.151 (0.087)	0.859	−0.110 (0.064)	0.895	0.003 (0.020)
Hispanic males, 16–17	−0.670*** (0.110)	0.511	−0.607*** (0.081)	0.544	−0.041 (0.028)
White males, 16–17	−1.035*** (0.094)	0.355	−0.677*** (0.068)	0.508	−0.082*** (0.022)
Black females, 8–15	−0.302 (0.316)	0.739	−0.988*** (0.242)	0.372	−0.081 (0.083)
Hispanic females, 8–15	−1.906 (1.116)	0.148	−2.907*** (0.656)	0.054	−0.374 (0.258)
White females, 8–15	−0.551 (0.443)	0.576	−0.681*** (0.314)	0.506	−0.072 (0.108)
Black females, 16–17	−0.940*** (0.143)	0.390	−1.085*** (0.122)	0.337	−0.106* (0.048)
Hispanic females, 16–17	−1.605*** (0.407)	0.200	−1.839*** (0.289)	0.158	−0.110 (0.114)
White females, 16–17	−1.433*** (0.155)	0.238	−1.695*** (0.155)	0.183	−0.155* (0.065)
Random effects
Variance component	0.157 (0.052)				0.575 (0.004)
ICC	0.046				0.149
Log likelihood	−21,054.98				−8,332.02
n	30,913				9,591

Note. Cases are nested within 20 judicial circuits. Models include the full list of control variables shown in Table 2. Black males 8–15 are used as the reference category. ICC = intraclass correlation.

*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

With regard to prison sentence length (Model 2), the findings are a bit more nuanced. In fact, while all of the coefficients except for Black males ages 16–17 are in the negative direction, only three are statistically significant. Specifically, White males ages 16–17, Black females ages 16–17, and White females ages 16–17 receive significantly shorter prison sentences than younger Black males, net of the controls. As in the multinomial logistic regression model for sentence type, these findings for sentence length suggest that being a Black male is associated with more punitive outcomes compared to other groups.

Conditional Effects of Primary Offense Type

The final set of analyses examines whether the effects of being Black or Hispanic on sentence severity are conditioned by primary offense type. This is accomplished by disaggregating the population and estimating the effects of the predictors for each primary offense type individually. The models in Panel A of Table 4 estimate hierarchical multinomial logistic regression equations of sentences to jail or prison versus supervision for each of the five categories of crime type, and the models in Panel B similarly estimate hierarchical linear regressions of prison sentence length. Only the effects of race and ethnicity are displayed, although all models control for the full list of control variables shown in Table 2. The bolded coefficients denote that the z-scores of those coefficients are significantly different from the corresponding estimates in the property offense models.

Table 4.

Multilevel Regressions of Sentence Type and Prison Sentence Length (ln), Disaggregated by Primary Offense Type.

	Panel A: Multinomial Logistic Regression
	Model 1: Violent		Model 2: Sex		Model 3: Property		Model 4: Drug		Model 5: Other
	b (SE)	Odds	b (SE)	Odds	b (SE)	Odds	b (SE)	Odds	b (SE)	Odds
Jail Versus Supervision
Black	0.804*** (0.100)	2.234	2.244** (0.842)	9.430	0.859*** (0.072)	2.360	1.006*** (0.111)	2.734	0.691*** (0.143)	1.995
Hispanic	0.182 (0.168)	1.199	3.437*** (0.908)	31.093	0.350** (0.120)	1.419	0.296 (0.190)	1.344	0.043 (0.253)	1.043
Prison Versus Supervision
Black	0.692*** (0.060)	1.997	0.379* (0.181)	1.460	0.477*** (0.060)	1.611	1.308*** (0.184)	3.698	0.425** (0.155)	1.529
Hispanic	0.274** (0.091)	1.315	0.407 (0.281)	1.502	−0.177 (0.097)	0.837	0.920*** (0.263)	2.509	−0.162 (0.266)	0.850
n	10,843		874		11,266		5,801		2,129
	Panel B: Linear Regression
	Model 6: Violent		Model 7: Sex		Model 8: Property		Model 9: Drug		Model 10: Other
	b (SE)		b (SE)		b (SE)		b (SE)		b (SE)
Prison Sentence Length (ln)
Black	0.098*** (0.022)		0.192* (0.076)		0.034 (0.020)		−0.002 (0.062)		0.012 (0.061)
Hispanic	0.043 (0.033)		−0.005 (0.121)		0.035 (0.034)		0.098 (0.085)		0.031 (0.105)
n	5,038		416		2,905		825		407

Note. Cases are nested within 20 judicial circuits. Models include the full list of control variables shown in Table 2. White is used as the reference category. Bolded coefficients are significantly different from the corresponding coefficient in the property offense model at p < .05 (two-tailed z-tests, Paternoster et al., 1998).

*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

In the jail versus supervision comparison, Black youth are more likely to be sentenced to jail than Whites for all offenses, but Hispanic–White disparities in the likelihood of a sentence to jail versus supervision are only observed for sex and property crimes. The results of the z-tests indicate that the effects of Hispanic ethnicity are significantly greater for sex offenses than for property offenses. Regarding the prison versus supervision comparison, Blacks are more likely than Whites to receive a sentence to prison, but significant effects of Hispanic ethnicity are only observed among violent and drug offenses. The z-tests reveal that there are significant differences in the race and ethnicity effects for violent offenses and drug offenses. Specifically, the effects of being either Black or Hispanic among violent and drug offenders are significantly larger than the same effects among property offenders. Thus, the effects of both race and Hispanic ethnicity are conditioned by primary offense type such that Hispanics sentenced for sex offenses are especially likely to be sentenced to jail, and both Blacks and Hispanics convicted of violent and drug crimes are particularly likely to receive sentences to prison.

In the panel of prison sentence length models, Black–White disparities are observed only for violent and sex offenses. The Hispanic coefficients are nonsignificant in all models. The z-tests revealed two significant differences: The effect of being Black is significantly greater among defendants sentenced for violent crimes and sex crimes than among those sentenced for property offenses. This finding suggests that these offense types condition the effect of race such that the disparities in sentence length between Black and White transferred youth are more especially prominent for violent and sex crimes.⁶

Discussion and Conclusion

A substantial body of literature has uncovered evidence of unwarranted racial and ethnic disparities in the punishment of adult offenders. However, very little research has explored the existence of these disparities in the sentences of juveniles who have been transferred to adult criminal court. In addition, no prior research has examined the possibility that the effects of race and ethnicity may interact with sex, age, and offense types. Drawing on the theoretical frameworks that emphasize the importance of focal concerns and causal attributions in sentencing, the present research provides an empirical examination on the criminal punishment of this unique population of offenders. Several important findings emerged from our analyses.

The first key finding of this study is that there is a punishment penalty experienced by Black transferred youth in both the likelihood of receiving a sentence to jail or prison and prison sentence length. After controlling for a number of legally relevant covariates, we find that Black offenders have a substantially greater odds of receiving either of these sanctions than Whites, and they receive prison sentences that are significantly longer than Whites as well. In addition, ethnicity has a direct effect on sentence severity, as Hispanics have a 38% greater odds than Whites of being sentenced to jail relative to supervision. However, no significant effects of Hispanic ethnicity are observed in prison versus supervision sentences and prison sentence length. These findings correspond with prior research of racial and ethnic disparities in the punishment of both juveniles in the juvenile court and adults in criminal courts in Florida (Bales & Piquero, 2012; Feldmeyer et al., 2015; Warren et al., 2012) and in other research contexts as well (Barnes & Kingsnorth, 1996; Doerner & Demuth, 2010; Steffensmeier & Demuth, 2006).

Second, we find evidence that the effects of race interact in notable ways with gender. Specifically, Black males are especially likely to receive sentences to jail or prison compared to other groups. With regard to prison sentence length, racial differences are far less pronounced, but Black males of both age-groups still tend to receive the longest sentences. Overall, the findings correspond with prior studies of adult offenders which have demonstrated that “young Black males” are sentenced more harshly than other groups (Steffensmeier et al., 1998; Warren et al., 2012). Theoretically, this result may indicate that causal attributions connecting race and criminality are interpreted alongside those related to gender in judges’ evaluations of the focal concerns. The findings also suggest that younger females are particularly likely to receive sentences to jail versus supervision, which, as noted above, often means being credited with time served only. However, females regardless of race, ethnicity, and age are the least likely to receive prison sentences and receive the shortest prison terms. Since this is the first study of race/sex/age interactions among transferred juveniles, future research should continue to explore how race and ethnicity effects may be conditioned by other extralegal offender characteristics among this unique population.

A final key insight from our analyses is that certain crime types condition the effects of race and ethnicity. When the population is divided according to categories of the primary offense and the effect sizes are compared with property offenders, Black and Hispanic transfers are sentenced especially harshly for violent, sex, and drug offenses. These findings lend credence to scholars’ hypotheses that perceptions of dangerousness associated with race and ethnicity are informed by attributions connecting Black and Hispanic youth to violent crime (Jackson & Pabon, 2000; Lane & Meeker, 2000; Nunn, 2002; Zimring, 1998). In addition, the observed sentencing disparity between Black and Hispanic drug offenders and similar White offenders corresponds with related prior research which has found that ethnicity effects on criminal court sentencing outcomes for adults are increased substantially when the primary offense is a drug crime (Demuth & Steffensmeier, 2004; Steffensmeier & Demuth, 2000; Warren et al., 2012). Indeed, our finding provides support for Steffensmeier and Demuth’s (2001, p. 168) speculation that “widespread attributions connecting Hispanic males to drug-trafficking networks and drug-related violence” may lead to their harsher treatment in sentencing.

Although the present research provides a number of contributions to the study of race, ethnicity, and the sentencing of transferred youth, it is not without limitations. First, while some of the measures used (e.g., case seriousness) are arguably more encompassing than those frequently engaged in sentencing research, it is likely that our analyses, as with nearly all sentencing studies, are still affected by unmeasured variable bias (Baumer, 2013). A number of important variables could not be controlled for in our models, including the mode of transfer (Rainville, 2008); offenders’ socioeconomic status (D’Alessio & Stolzenberg, 1993); and the priorities, biases, and sentencing philosophies of judges and prosecutors (Albonetti, 1991; Bushway & Piehl, 2001; Farrell & Holmes, 1991). Future research would benefit from expanding the list of potential confounding variables, focusing especially on the characteristics of judges (Steffensmeier & Britt, 2001) and contextual factors (Ulmer & Johnson, 2004).

A related limitation of the current study is that, while our analysis makes use of important measures of legally relevant controls, we are unable to take into account the process of selection into the population of transferred juveniles (see Johnson & Kurlychek, 2012; Kurlychek & Johnson, 2010). Because the data only include criminal court defendants, we are not able to estimate the probability that each juvenile would be transferred to the adult court. These issues are directly tied race and ethnicity, as prior research has demonstrated that Black and Hispanic youth are more likely to experience transfer than White juveniles (e.g., Bortner et al., 2000; Lemmon, Austin, Verreccia, & Fetzer, 2005). Future research of adult court outcomes among transfers should strive to employ data that allow for the consideration of these selection effects.

As judges, prosecutors, and legislators have continued to rely heavily on transfer as means to ensure harsh punishments for certain juvenile offenders (Griffin et al., 2011; Puzzanchera & Addie, 2014), the extent to which legally irrelevant factors can influence the sentencing decisions of this cohort of youth is an important line of inquiry. A recent review of the research has shown that there is compelling evidence to suggest that transferred youth are more likely to recidivate than similar youth who are retained in the juvenile justice system (Zane, Welsh, & Mears, 2016). Thus, it is reasonable to conclude that racial and ethnic disparities in the sentencing of this population are likely to result in additional disproportionate contact with the criminal justice system and thereby contribute to further disadvantage among minority delinquent youth.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Gary Kleck, Sonja E. Siennick, Brian J. Stults, Daniel P. Mears, and Stephanie Bontrager Ryon for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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