IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/amlawe/v17y2015i1p127-159..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Estimating Gender Disparities in Federal Criminal Cases

Author

Listed:
  • Sonja B. Starr

Abstract

This paper assesses and decomposes gender disparities in federal criminal cases. It finds large unexplained gaps favoring women throughout the sentence length distribution, conditional on arrest offense, criminal history, and other pre-charge observables. Decompositions show that most of the unexplained disparity appears to emerge during charging, plea-bargaining, and sentencing fact-finding. The approach provides an important complement to prior disparity studies, which have focused on sentencing and have not incorporated disparities arising from those earlier stages. I also consider various plausible causal theories that could explain the estimated gender gap, using the rich dataset to test their implications.

Suggested Citation

  • Sonja B. Starr, 2015. "Estimating Gender Disparities in Federal Criminal Cases," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 17(1), pages 127-159.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:amlawe:v:17:y:2015:i:1:p:127-159.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/aler/ahu010
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Vickers, Chris, 2016. "Socioeconomic status and judicial disparities in England and Wales, 1870–1910," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 32-53.
    2. Philippe, Arnaud, 2017. "Incarcerate one to calm the others? Spillover effects of incarceration among criminal groups: Job Market Paper," TSE Working Papers 17-840, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    3. Samantha Bielen & Peter Grajzl, 2021. "Prosecution or Persecution? Extraneous Events and Prosecutorial Decisions," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 18(4), pages 765-800, December.
    4. Anna Bindler & Randi Hjalmarsson, 2020. "The Persistence of the Criminal Justice Gender Gap: Evidence from 200 Years of Judicial Decisions," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 63(2), pages 297-339.
    5. Julia Godfrey & Kegon Teng Kok Tan & Mariyana Zapryanova, 2023. "The Effect of Parole Board Racial Composition on Prisoner Outcomes," Working Papers 2023-011, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    6. Kristin F. Butcher & Kyung H. Park & Anne Morrison Piehl, 2017. "Comparing Apples to Oranges: Differences in Women’s and Men’s Incarceration and Sentencing Outcomes," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 35(S1), pages 201-234.
    7. Philippe, Arnaud, 2017. "Incarcerate one to calm the others? Spillover effects of incarceration among criminal groups: Job Maket Paper," IAST Working Papers 17-70, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST).
    8. Raphael Corbi & Rafael Ferreira & Jaqueline Oliveira & Danilo Souza, 2021. "Female judges and in-group bias in labor courts," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 41(3), pages 1313-1321.
    9. Ward, Jeffrey T. & Hartley, Richard D. & Tillyer, Rob, 2016. "Unpacking gender and racial/ethnic biases in the federal sentencing of drug offenders: A causal mediation approach," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 196-206.
    10. Talia Fisher & Tamar Kricheli‐Katz & Issi Rosen‐Zvi & Theodore Eisenberg, 2016. "He Paid, She Paid: Exploiting Israeli Courts' Rulings on Litigation Costs to Explore Gender Biases," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 13(3), pages 536-561, September.
    11. Tamar Kricheli‐Katz & Keren Weinshall, 2023. "Judging fast or slow: The effects of reduced caseloads on gender‐ and ethnic‐based disparities in case outcomes," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 20(4), pages 961-1004, December.
    12. Philippe, Arnaud, 2017. "Gender disparities in criminal justice," TSE Working Papers 17-762, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    13. Gavrilova, Evelina, 2021. "Females in Crime," MPRA Paper 105891, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Metin Coşgel & Hamdi Genç & Emre Özer & Sadullah Yıldırım, 2022. "Gender and Justice: The Status of Women in Ottoman Courts," Working papers 2022-03, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
    15. Arnaud Philippe, 2020. "Gender Disparities in Sentencing," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 87(348), pages 1037-1077, October.
    16. Samantha Bielen & Peter Grajzl & Wim Marneffe, 2021. "Blame based on one's name? Extralegal disparities in criminal conviction and sentencing," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 51(3), pages 469-521, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:amlawe:v:17:y:2015:i:1:p:127-159.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/aler .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.