IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/empleg/v13y2016i4p637-665.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Legal and Extralegal Origins of Sentencing Disparities: Evidence from Russia's Criminal Courts

Author

Listed:
  • Vadim Volkov

Abstract

This article conducts the first analysis of sentencing disparities related to social characteristics of offenders in Russia. It uses a data set of sentencing decisions consisting of over 5 million observations representing the entire population of defendants between 2009 and 2013. The analysis focuses on all felony cases processed by federal district courts (2,905,608 individuals) and estimates sentencing disparities (decisions to imprison and sentence length) related to general social status characteristics of offenders as well as to finer occupational differences. The Russian Criminal Code prescribes that judges should account for the personality of the defendant and his or her family condition, but does not specify how this should be done in practice. Controlling for major legal characteristics of offense and offender, as well as for judge‐level variation, the analysis shows sentencing disparities connected with gender, unemployment, citizenship, local residence, marital status, and occupational status of defendants. Disparities are explained with reference to different origins. Thus, a more severe punishment of law enforcement employees for premeditated crimes corresponds to the legal rule; a harsher treatment of the unemployed and a more lenient sentencing of married defendants are interpreted with reference to legitimate concerns about repeated offending. Extralegal bias is manifested in the more severe punishment of private entrepreneurs and softer punishment of college students. Sentencing disparities are also estimated at different values of sentence length.

Suggested Citation

  • Vadim Volkov, 2016. "Legal and Extralegal Origins of Sentencing Disparities: Evidence from Russia's Criminal Courts," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 13(4), pages 637-665, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:empleg:v:13:y:2016:i:4:p:637-665
    DOI: 10.1111/jels.12128
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/jels.12128
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/jels.12128?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ella Paneyakh, 2014. "Faking performance together: systems of performance evaluation in Russian enforcement agencies and production of bias and privilege," Post-Soviet Affairs, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(2-3), pages 115-136, May.
    2. Frye, Timothy, 2004. "Credible Commitment and Property Rights: Evidence from Russia," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 98(3), pages 453-466, August.
    3. David S. Abrams & Marianne Bertrand & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2012. "Do Judges Vary in Their Treatment of Race?," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 41(2), pages 347-383.
    4. Xingdong Feng & Xuming He & Jianhua Hu, 2011. "Wild bootstrap for quantile regression," Biometrika, Biometrika Trust, vol. 98(4), pages 995-999.
    5. Peter Solomon, 1987. "The case of the vanishing acquittal: Informal norms and the practice of soviet criminal justice," Europe-Asia Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(4), pages 531-555.
    6. D'Alessio, Stewart J. & Stolzenberg, Lisa, 1993. "Socioeconomic status and the sentencing of the traditional offender," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 61-77.
    7. Mustard, David B, 2001. "Racial, Ethnic, and Gender Disparities in Sentencing: Evidence from the U.S. Federal Courts," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 44(1), pages 285-314, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Cécile Bourreau-Dubois & Myriam Doriat-Duban & Bruno Jeandidier & Jean-Claude Ray, 2023. "Do child support guidelines result in lower inter-judge disparity? The case of the French advisory child support guidelines," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 55(1), pages 87-116, February.
    2. 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.
    3. Kurmangaliyeva Madina, 2018. "Missing Rich Offenders: Traffic Accidents and the Impartiality of Justice," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 14(1), pages 1-29, March.
    4. Travova, Ekaterina, 2023. "Under pressure? Performance evaluation of police officers as an incentive to cheat," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 212(C), pages 1143-1172.
    5. Monika Stachowiak-Kudła & Janusz Kudła, 2022. "Path dependence in administrative adjudication: the role played by legal tradition," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 33(3), pages 301-325, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kurmangaliyeva Madina, 2018. "Missing Rich Offenders: Traffic Accidents and the Impartiality of Justice," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 14(1), pages 1-29, March.
    2. Simone Bertoli & Morgane Laouenan & Jérôme Valette, 2022. "Border Apprehensions and Federal Sentencing of Hispanic Citizens in the United States," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03818735, HAL.
    3. Wayne Geerling & Gary Magee & Paul A. Raschky & Russell Smyth, 2020. "Bad News From The Front And From Above: Bombing Raids, Military Fatalities And The Death Penalty In Nazi Germany," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 58(3), pages 1450-1468, July.
    4. Chen, Daniel L., 2018. "Judicial Analytics and the Great Transformation of American Law," TSE Working Papers 18-974, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    5. 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.
    6. Bontrager Ryon, Stephanie, 2013. "Gender as social threat: A study of offender sex, situational factors, gender dynamics and social control," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 41(6), pages 426-437.
    7. Ash, Elliott & Asher, Sam & Bhowmick, Aditi & Bhupatiraju, Sandeep & Chen, Daniel L. & Devi, Tatanya & Goessmann, Christoph & Novosad, Paul & Siddiqi, Bilal, 2022. "Measuring Gender and Religious Bias in the Indian Judiciary," TSE Working Papers 22-1395, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    8. Dougherty, Shaun M. & Goodman, Joshua S. & Hill, Darryl V. & Litke, Erica G. & Page, Lindsay C., 2017. "Objective course placement and college readiness: Evidence from targeted middle school math acceleration," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 141-161.
    9. Chen, Daniel L., 2018. "Judicial Analytics and the Great Transformation of American Law," IAST Working Papers 18-87, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST).
    10. Chu, Hongli & Sun, Shengmin & Wei, Jian, 2024. "Fiscal pressure and judicial decisions: Evidence from financial penalties for official corruption in China," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    11. Chad M. Topaz & Shaoyang Ning & Maria-Veronica Ciocanel & Shawn Bushway, 2023. "Federal criminal sentencing: race-based disparate impact and differential treatment in judicial districts," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 10(1), pages 1-10, December.
    12. Samantha Bielen & Wim Marneffe & Naci H. Mocan, 2018. "Racial Bias and In-group Bias in Judicial Decisions: Evidence from Virtual Reality Courtrooms," NBER Working Papers 25355, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Chen, Daniel L., 2018. "Machine Learning and the Rule of Law," TSE Working Papers 18-975, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    14. Crystal S. Yang, 2015. "Free at Last? Judicial Discretion and Racial Disparities in Federal Sentencing," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 44(1), pages 75-111.
    15. Libman Alexander & Schultz André & Graeber Thomas, 2016. "Tax Return as a Political Statement," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 12(2), pages 377-445, July.
    16. Amartya Bose, 2020. "Racial disparities in law enforcement: The role of in-group bias and electoral pressures," Discussion Papers 2020-11, School of Economics, The University of New South Wales.
    17. Philippe, Arnaud, 2017. "Gender disparities in criminal justice," TSE Working Papers 17-762, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    18. Chen, Daniel L., 2018. "Machine Learning and Rule of Law," IAST Working Papers 18-88, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST).
    19. Chen,Daniel Li & Graham,Jimmy & Ramos Maqueda,Manuel & Singh,Shashank - DIME3, 2022. "Do Judges Favor Their Own Ethnicity and Gender ? Evidence from Kenya," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9956, The World Bank.
    20. Bjerk, David J. & Helland, Eric, 2017. "Using a Ratio Test to Estimate Racial Differences in Wrongful Conviction Rates," IZA Discussion Papers 10631, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    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:wly:empleg:v:13:y:2016:i:4:p:637-665. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1740-1461 .

    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.