Sentencing, Trends, and Disparities: Crime

Many scholars have examined sentencing disparities in efforts to explain why and how these differences occur and untangle the legal and extralegal influences on punishment. This article provides an overview of the common criminological perspectives found in the sentencing literature. We then summarize trends in sentencing research over the last three decades, reviewing much of the empirical research on disparities in the areas of race and ethnicity, gender, and mode of conviction. We conclude with a discussion of some of the gaps and unexplored/underexplored areas in the literature, making suggestions for future research in this field.