SENTENCING-GUIDELINE STUDY FINDS CONTINUING DISPARITIES

WASHINGTON (AP) - The number of minority inmates in federal penitentiaries,
as a percentage of all federal prisoners, has increased sharply since
sentencing guidelines took effect in 1987 and now accounts for a majority
of the prison population, a study reviewing 15 years of data has concluded.

The study was conducted by the United States Sentencing Commission, which
sets the guidelines for federal judges. The panel examined how well the
guidelines had brought uniformity to punishments, and found that while
sentencing had become "more certain and predictable," disparities still
existed among races and regions of the country, with blacks generally
receiving harsher punishment than whites.

The findings come as the Supreme Court considers the constitutionality of
the guidelines, which advocates say are crucial to achieving fairness in
punishment. The justices could decide as early as next week whether to
throw out the system because it allows judges, rather than juries, to
consider factors that can add years to sentences.

Yet before the guidelines were created in 1987, judges had wide discretion
in issuing sentences. The guidelines, in contrast, give them a range of
possible punishments for a given crime and make it difficult for them to go
outside those boundaries.

The study found that the average prison sentence today is about 50 months,
twice what it was in 1984, when lawmakers began calling for a uniform
sentencing system. The difference, the study determined, is due mostly to
the guidelines' elimination of parole for offenses like drug trafficking.

"The big unanswered question is, Do we need to have sentences growing this
way?" said one sentencing expert, Douglas A. Berman, a law professor at
Ohio State University. "Nobody wants to go back to the bad old days of
complete unguided judicial discretion."

Whites made up 35 percent of the prison population in 2002, a sharp decline
from nearly 60 percent in 1984, according to the report. It attributed the
decrease to a striking growth in Hispanics imprisoned on immigration
charges - to 40 percent of federal prisoners, from about 15 percent.

In addition, the gap in punishment between blacks and whites widened. While
blacks and whites received an average sentence of slightly more than two
years in 1984, blacks now stay in prison for about six years, compared with
about four years for whites. The report attributed this disparity in part
to harsher mandatory minimum sentences that Congress imposed for
drug-related crimes like cocaine possession. In 2002, 81 percent of
offenders in such cases were black.

The study found harsher punishments generally in the South than in the
Northeast and the West, though it concluded that legal differences in
individual cases "explain the vast majority of variation among judges and
regions."

A bigger problem causing sentencing disparities, it said, is plea
bargaining. The study said that as an incentive for getting guilty pleas,
prosecutors offered more lenient punishments than those mandated in the
guidelines in as many as one-third of cases.