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Study: Federal judges give steeper sentences to Hispanic immigrants in places with less immigration

Hispanic immigrants face harsher federal sentences than whites in regions of the country that have newer Hispanic immigrant populations or have not experienced a significant influx of them, according to a new study.

However, the journal of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences found no such disparity among defendants in Texas, California, Arizona, northern Illinois, southeastern New York and other federal jurisdictions with well-established Latino populations.

Areas with emerging Latino immigrant populations such as northern Florida and southern Indiana also had no significant sentencing disparities in recent years for defendants with similar criminal backgrounds convicted of robbery, gun crimes, drug possession and other non-immigration offenses.

The findings in the Justice Quarterly report suggest that judicial attitudes are more reactionary in parts of the country that have seen a wave of new immigrants, with the mindsets of judges possibly stirred by the national debate over the issue.

“Our speculation is that in new destinations of the ‘90s that experienced a big influx of Hispanic immigration that was a shock to those places, the reception of Hispanic immigrants was sometimes harsh,” said Jeffery T. Ulmer, a Penn State professor who co-authored the study with Brandy R. Parker, a doctoral student at the university. “We think maybe there was lots of fear of crime that increased, fear of Hispanic immigrants and people thinking that they were criminals, and the federal courts were being influenced by that.”

The way Ulmer sees it, black robes do not render jurists immune to attitudes of the people in their local communities.

“Federal judges, even though they have lifetime appointments, are influenced by the sociopolitical characteristics of their districts,” he said. “Courts are like communities they’re a part of and influenced by the communities they live in.”

Given patterns of immigration to traditional, emerging and new destinations, the authors wondered, would sentencing differ based on where a person were sentenced? The scholars found a significant disparity, especially in sentencing of immigrants living in the country without legal permission in less-established destinations for non-immigration related crimes.

The social scientists examined Census data of Hispanic immigration from 1990 to 2000 and from 2000 to 2010 within federal court jurisdictions and compared federal sentencing outcomes for whites and Hispanics during the two time periods. They also compared sentences for Hispanics who were U.S. citizens and noncitizens.

The study found that in areas that have traditionally had large Hispanic immigrant populations, the disparity in sentencing was minimal. In places where there were few new immigrants or barely any immigrants, the disparity in sentences for the same crime was greater, especially among immigrants living in the country without legal permission.

In the last decade of the 20th Century, prison terms handed down for Latino immigrants were 12 percent stronger than for whites in new destinations, and 11 percent greater in non-destinations. This was true for all Hispanic immigrants regardless of their legal status. Ten years later, the disparities persisted only for Hispanic immigrants living in the country without legal permission in new destinations and those with minimal Hispanic immigration.

Other research has suggested there is disproportional sentencing for immigrants, but the Penn State study plows new ground by breaking down the data by court circuit and examining how immigrants are perceived in areas that have long-standing immigrant populations compared with how they’re perceived where immigrant populations are more sparse and less familiar to court officials, said Nazgol Ghandnoosh, a senior research analyst with the Sentencing Project in Washington, D.C.

“The rhetoric and the general concept that a lot of people have is that we’re intolerant of crime committed by noncitizens,” Ghandnoosh said. “Our entire legal apparatus is set up so that it impedes immigrants’ ability to become citizens… This confirms that.”