#sentencing

Le tueur en série de Gilgo Beach, Rex Heuermann, a été condamné mercredi à la peine maximale pour le meurtre de huit femmes sur une période de près de deux décennies. Le juge Timothy Mazzei lui a infligé trois peines de réclusion criminelle à perpétuité pour meurtre au premier degré, ainsi que 25 ans supplémentaires pour quatre chefs de meurtre au second degré, le tout à purger de manière…

The father of Texas teenager Karmelo Anthony said “nobody wins” after a jury rejected his son’s claims of self-defense and convicted him of murder in the stabbing death of fellow student-athlete Austin Metcalf.  Anthony was accused of fatally stabbing Metcalf at a track meet in Frisco on April 2, 2025. Prosecutors described the attack as intentional, but Anthony said it happened after Metcalf and…

Kouri Richins was sentenced today to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the murder of her husband, Eric Richins. The sentence lands where many people believe it should: at the harshest end of the law, for a calculated killing prosecutors say was driven by money, deception, and self-interest. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder, attempted murder, insurance fraud,…

By: Steve Stewart-Williams

Published: May 9, 2026

Black people and men get longer sentences; people who kill Black people or men get shorter ones

We’d all like to believe that the criminal justice system is rational: that punishments are meted out fairly, consistently, and in ways that promote the common good. And contrary to the cynics, they often are. In certain respects, however, the system falls short of this ideal. People’s biases and instinctive taste for vengeance sometimes intrude on legal decision-making, such that offenders are punished in ways that have little to do with fairness or social utility. While racial biases in criminal justice are widely recognized, other biases - including those based on sex - receive far less attention. In this essay, I explore how these biases shape punishment, and what this reveals about the gap between justice as it is and justice as it ought to be.

The Goldilocks Approach to Punishment

When it comes to theories of punishment, one stands head and shoulders above the rest: optimal punishment theory. Most famously associated with the economist Gary Becker, optimal punishment theory treats criminal justice as a matter of balancing costs and benefits. The central idea is that punishments should be set at a level that minimizes both the costs of crime and the costs of punishing it.

This deceptively simple premise yields various concrete proposals about how society ought to punish different crimes and different criminals. One is that crimes that are harder to solve should attract harsher penalties, so the average expected cost of offending remains high despite the lower probability of getting caught. A second is that criminals at greater risk of reoffending should be punished more severely, both to deter them effectively and to incapacitate them for longer. And a third is that punishment should not be shaped by factors that are irrelevant to the goal of minimizing the combined costs of crime and punishment.

In short, punishment should be neither too harsh nor too lenient, but “just right” for minimizing social harm.

Does the System Measure Up?

All of this sounds eminently reasonable - but to what extent does reality approach the ideal? Many studies have addressed this question over the years, but one particularly illuminating contribution is a paper by Edward Glaeser and Bruce Sacerdote titled “Sentencing in Homicide Cases and the Role of Vengeance.” The paper tests some of the central predictions of optimal punishment theory by examining sentencing patterns in US homicide cases.

In some ways, the news is good. Glaeser and Sacerdote report, for example, that offenders tend to be punished more severely when the risk of getting caught is low, consistent with the idea that harsher penalties are needed to deter potential offenders in those circumstances. Thus, arson-related homicides receive longer sentences than homicides during robberies, which in turn receive longer sentences than homicides during drunken brawls.

[ Sentence length and apprehension rates across homicide types. Apprehension rate is measured as fraction of homicides in which police have a charged suspect (that is, report offender data) in the Uniform Crime Reports Supplementary Homicide Reports. Source: Glaeser and Sacerdote (2003). ]

Also consistent with optimal punishment theory, offenders at higher risk of reoffending tend to be punished more severely. People who kill during a robbery, for instance, receive longer sentences than those who kill during a fight or lovers’ quarrel.

[ Sentence length and recidivism rates across homicide types. Recidivism rates are fitted values based on offender characteristics. The coefficients for the fitted values are estimated using the BJS data set “Recidivism of Felons on Probation, 1986–1989” (Bureau of Justice Statistics 1992). Source: Glaeser and Sacerdote (2003). ]

So far, so good. In these respects, the system behaves roughly as optimal punishment theory would predict and recommend.

But then things start going off the rails.

Bias in the Machine

One of the central premises of optimal punishment theory is that factors unrelated to crime risk should play no role in determining punishment. But Glaeser and Sacerdote found compelling evidence that they do.

The researchers looked at two broad categories of influence: demographic characteristics of the offender and demographic characteristics of the victim.

Let’s begin with the offender. A large body of research suggests that various demographic traits influence sentence length even after controlling for potential confounds such as crime severity and criminal history. Perhaps the least surprising example is that Black offenders tend to receive longer sentences than White offenders for the same crime. More surprising to many is that men tend to receive longer sentences than women. Indeed, women from every ethnic group - even the least favored - tend to receive shorter sentences than even the whitest of White men.

[ Continued... (paywall) ]

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https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/374707

Abstract

Does the economic model of optimal punishment explain the variation in the sentencing of murderers? While there is strong support for several predictions of the model, we document that sentences respond to victim characteristics in a way that is hard to reconcile with optimal punishment. In particular, victim characteristics are important determinants of sentencing among vehicular homicides, in which victims are basically random and in which the optimal punishment model predicts that victim characteristics should be ignored. Among vehicular homicides, drivers who kill women get 59 percent longer sentences. Drivers who kill blacks get 60 percent shorter sentences.

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Abstract

Despite well-documented disparities disadvantaging women (e.g. discrepancies between men and women in salaries and leadership roles), we argue that there are contexts in which disparities disadvantage men. We review the literature suggesting harm to women is perceived as more severe and unacceptable than identical harm to men, a bias potentially rooted in evolutionary, base rate, stereotype-based and cultural shift explanations. We explore how these biases manifest in protective responses toward women and harsher judgements toward men, particularly in contexts of victimization and perpetration. Our review aims to complement the existing literature on gender biases by presenting a balanced view that acknowledges men and women face unique challenges. By understanding these biases, we hope to foster a more equitable discourse on gender and harm, encouraging empathy and validation of suffering irrespective of gender. This holistic approach aims to de-escalate gender-based conflicts and promote effective interventions for both men and women.

Abstract

Texas man behind $20M Meta-1 Coin fraud gets 23-year sentence

A Texas man who helped orchestrate a cryptocurrency scam that defrauded roughly $20 million from about 1,000 investors was sentenced to 23 years in federal prison on Tuesday. U.S. District Judge LaShonda Hunt handed down the sentence to Robert Dunlap, who served as a trustee for ...