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This chapter presents four theories that hypothesize race/ethnicity disparities in sentence outcomes. Empirical studies assessing the relationship between defendant’s race/ethnicity and sentence severity are discussed.

I focus on federal sentencing in terms of support or non-support of the theoretical perspectives.

Sentence disparity linked to defendant’s race/ethnicity are observed as net main effects, as a component in joint-conditioning effects with other extralegal defendant characteristics, and as a variable that conditions the effect of process-related mechanism of discretion, and legally relevant case characteristics, and as indirect effects.

Theories share substantial conceptual overlap in specifying the relationship between defendant’s race/ethnicity and predictions of the effect of defendant’s race/ethnicity on sentence severity.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the federal sentencing of organizational probation for environmental offenders using the focal concerns. Those organizations that are more blameworthy should be sentenced to longer probation terms. However, little research has been conducted to examine whether probation is being sentenced accordingly. This is especially true for organizations convicted of environmental offenses, which are often thought of as deserving of increased penalties compared to non-environmental offenses.

This study used quantitative federal sentencing data from 2011 to 2020 (n = 1,436) and eight potential measures of blameworthiness grounded in the focal concerns.

The results showed that those organizations convicted of environmental crimes received 30% longer probation sentences than those not convicted of environmental crimes. However, additional measurements of blameworthiness derived from the existing literature of focal concerns were not relevant to probation sentencing decisions.

This study extends the application of the focal concerns and increases the body of knowledge regarding the sentencing of federal environmental offenders.

The purpose of this study is to examine public perceptions and attitudes toward using artificial intelligence (AI) in the US criminal justice system.

The authors took a quantitative approach and administered an online survey using the Amazon Mechanical Turk platform. The instrument was developed by integrating prior literature to create multiple scales for measuring public perceptions and attitudes.

The findings suggest that despite the various attempts, there are still significant perceptions of sociodemographic bias in the criminal justice system and technology alone cannot alleviate them. However, AI can assist judges in making fairer and more objective decisions by using triangulation – offering additional data points to offset individual biases.

Other scholars can build upon the findings and extend the work to shed more light on some problems of growing concern for society – bias and inequality in criminal sentencing. AI can be a valuable tool to assist judges in the decision-making process by offering diverse viewpoints. Furthermore, the authors bridge the gap between the fields of technology and criminal justice and demonstrate how the two can be successfully integrated for the benefit of society.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is among the first studies to examine a complex societal problem like the introduction of technology in a high-stakes environment – the US criminal justice system. Understanding how AI is perceived by society is necessary to develop more transparent and unbiased algorithms for assisting judges in making fair and equitable sentencing decisions. In addition, the authors developed and validated a new scale that can be used to further examine this novel approach to criminal sentencing in the future.

This chapter aims to demonstrate that the fundamental human rights principle that no one should be subjected to (grossly) disproportionate punishment should be interpreted to take into account terminal illness of the offender. It should be applied both during imposition of the sentences and also during execution of already imposed sentences.

In order to reveal whether this principle takes into account serious medical conditions, including terminal illness of the offender in the calculus of the proportionality of punishment and whether it is applicable at the execution stage of sentences, this chapter examined the roots of the fundamental human rights principle of proportionality of punishment by briefly surveying the penal theory, jurisprudence, court cases, laws, and legislative history from the U.S. federal and state jurisdictions and from Europe.

There is a consensus among surveyed theories that terminal illness of the offender is an element of the principle of proportionality of punishment. Thus the fundamental human rights principle must be interpreted to take it into account. The principle should be observed not only at the imposition stage, but also at the execution stage of already imposed sentences.

This chapter re-examines the roots of the fundamental human right to not being subjected to (grossly) disproportionate punishment. It does so in order to demonstrate that the right should be interpreted to take into account terminal illness of the offender and that it should be observed not only at the imposition stage, but also at the execution stage of already imposed sentences.

This research examines the direct and interactive effects of defendant race and sex on judicial decisions to utilize mitigating departures in cases involving felony drug convictions in Virginia.

Logistic regression models are used to examine judicial decisions to depart downward in Schedule I & II, and Other (Schedule III, VI, and V), drug cases. The direct and interactive effects of race and sex on departure decisions are modeled separately for Schedule I & II and Other drug offenses.

Defendant race and sex exert both direct and interactive effects on decisions to sentence offenders below the guidelines for both drug categories. Cases involving Black and male defendants, relative to white and female defendants, are significantly less likely to result in mitigating departures for Schedule I & II, and Other drug, violations. The interaction models indicate that cases involving Black male defendants are less likely to result in mitigating departures than other cases, while cases involving white females have higher odds of receiving mitigating departures than other cases.

This chapter adds to the current literature on sentencing disparity by examining unwarranted sentencing disparity in Virginia, where scant research has been conducted. Furthermore, this research models decisions separately by drug category and examines both the direct and interactive effects of race and sex.

This chapter explores some of the risks and constraints associated with defendants’ apologies during allocution at sentencing. It argues that defendants’ stigmatized institutional role identities in conjunction with the constraints imposed by the discursive context of allocution function to limit both the effectiveness with which defendants can speak on their own behalf and the kinds of things that they can say. Allocution has long been understood as a protection for defendants. This chapter proposes that the ideologies associated with this turn at talk have functioned to obscure the ways in which allocution preserves existing power configurations instead of challenging them.

Many jurisdictions fine illegal cartels using penalty guidelines that presume an arbitrary 10% overcharge. This article surveys more than 700 published economic studies and judicial decisions that contain 2,041 quantitative estimates of overcharges of hard-core cartels. The primary findings are: (1) the median average long-run overcharge for all types of cartels over all time periods is 23.0%; (2) the mean average is at least 49%; (3) overcharges reached their zenith in 1891–1945 and have trended downward ever since; (4) 6% of the cartel episodes are zero; (5) median overcharges of international-membership cartels are 38% higher than those of domestic cartels; (6) convicted cartels are on average 19% more effective at raising prices as unpunished cartels; (7) bid-rigging conduct displays 25% lower markups than price-fixing cartels; (8) contemporary cartels targeted by class actions have higher overcharges; and (9) when cartels operate at peak effectiveness, price changes are 60–80% higher than the whole episode. Historical penalty guidelines aimed at optimally deterring cartels are likely to be too low.

This paper aims to examine sentencing decisions for drug-trafficking offences in the criminal courts of the city of Recife to address a gap in quantitative research on drug sentencing and incarceration in Brazil.

Using original data obtained from the Court of Justice for Pernambuco, the research used multivariate regression analysis to investigate the effect of case processing, offender, and offence characteristics on sentence length.

A key finding of the research is the influence of two legal factors on sentence length: admitting to a drug-trafficking offence and being categorized as “mitigated trafficking”. Results also indicate that first-time defendants were more likely to be categorized as mitigated trafficking, stressing the importance of criminal history on predicting sentencing outcomes. “Mitigated trafficking” is a distinct category of drug-trafficking created by the Drug Law nº. 11.343 (2006) to protect defendants considered novices in the illicit drug market from receiving longer imprisonment sentences.

The findings suggest that the policy strategy of having a legal distinction for a specific type of defendant appears to be effective in impacting sentence length for drug-trafficking convictions. Future research could explore how similar strategies could be adopted to influence sentencing for other vulnerable groups. However, focussing on a defendant records or prior convictions as an eligibility criterion could disproportionately impact defendants who are caught in a cycle of re-offending for socio-economic reasons or a need to finance a substance use disorder.

This research address a gap in quantitative sentencing research in Brazil and contributes to the broader literature by presenting results that are aligned with previous studies conducted in North America.

Criminal Medicare and/or Medicaid fraud costs taxpayers $60‐250 billion annually. This paper aims to outline the characteristics of physicians who have been convicted of such fraud.

The names of convicted physicians were first gathered from public databases (primarily, the OIG exclusion list). The names were further cross‐checked and verified with other public records. Details regarding demographics and the particulars of the fraud were obtained by searching court documents, media reports, the internet, and records maintained by the American Medical Association and state medical licensing boards. The paper categorizes these doctors by: age, gender, geographic location, medical school attended, and medical specialty, and compares these demographics to those of the medical profession as a whole. The paper then identifies: the specific Medicare fraud these physicians were charged with; length of prison sentence and/or probation imposed; amount of fines assessed and/or restitution ordered; and professional sanctions imposed.

Physicians convicted of criminal Medicare and/or Medicaid fraud tend to be male (87 percent), older (average age of 58), and international medical graduates (59 percent). Family practitioners and psychiatrists are overrepresented. The amount of fraud averaged $1.4 million per convicted physician. Surprisingly, despite the fact that 40 percent of such fraud compromised patient care and safety, 37 percent of physicians convicted of felony fraud served no jail time, 38 percent of physicians with fraud convictions continue to practice medicine, and 21 percent were not suspended from medical practice for a single day despite their fraud convictions.

The paper makes several practical recommendations including: running as many claims as possible through predictive modeling software to detect fraud before claims are paid; developing metrics on the average rate of diagnoses and procedures by specialty to be used in the predictive modeling software; incorporating the basics of ethical billing and the consequences of fraud convictions into the medical school curriculum and testing this knowledge on the USMLE; and encouraging and/or pressuring state medical boards to hold physicians more accountable for fraud.

The paper categorizes doctors convicted of Medicare and/or Medicaid fraud and makes specific recommendations regarding physician training, licensing and discipline, to reduce the amount of Medicare fraud perpetrated by doctors in the future.

The purpose of this paper is to make readers aware of the extensiveness of healthcare fraud in the USA and how it involves and affects the government, healthcare providers, insurance companies, patients and the public. In addition, recommendations are made that may help control this pervasive type of fraud.

A range of different journal publications, information from government health institutions and law enforcement websites, healthcare fraud cases and healthcare laws are used as a basis to provide information about how fraudsters are committing healthcare fraud and how to prevent this fraud from occurring.

Despite increased funding and prosecution efforts by the government, healthcare fraud continues to be a major threat to the US economy and public. While healthcare fraud will never be eradicated, specific efforts can be deployed to help rein in these complex fraud schemes.

The paper provides a useful resource of information on healthcare fraud for healthcare providers, insurance companies, patients and the public that may help combat healthcare fraud and prevent financial losses.

Every dollar saved from combating fraud could be used to improve access to more or better health services and can, thereby, save lives.

This paper provides recommendations regarding healthcare fraud that could help prevent this large drain on the US economy.