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Research on Race and Sentencing: Goals, Methods, and Topics

Given the persistent racial disproportionality of inmate populations in the USA (and in many other countries), research on race and sentencing has received, and should continue to receive, a very high priority. Eric Baumer has given us a valuable overview of the apparent goals, accomplishments, and limitations of extant research on this topic, and the new directions which that research might take to better accomplish its goals. In particular, he wisely points to the relatively narrow set of research questions posed and methodologies used, the persistent limitations of those methods, and the need to expand research both in terms of topics and methods. As to the former, we surely need much more research on critical case processing steps that come before——and after——the initial sentencing decisions that have most often been examined. And to supplement the modal application of multiple regression models, we need to apply a variety of other methodologies——each, assuredly, subject to its own inherent limitations and problems. In the classic phrase coined by Zeisel