Leymon 7
sentencing reforms and elimination of discretionary parole release is not absolute. Furthermore, even
states implementing both sentencing and parole changes have often instituted them in different years.
Therefore, analysis of the elimination of parole boards (determinate sentencing) is analyzed as a separate
reform outside of the mutually exclusive sentencing models.
Table 1 About Here
With indeterminate sentencing dominating the correctional system prior to 1975, giving full reigns to
the presiding judge in a case, it is not surprising that social science research began to uncover a pattern of
bias and discrimination within the sentencing procedure (Walker, Spohn, and Delone, 2000). Numerous
studies focusing on African-Americans indicated that until the middle of the 1970’s being black had a
direct and significant effect on length of sentence; this was particularly true for violent crimes (Herbert,
1997). In the South, it was found that when a rape victim was white and the offender was black, the
sentence was three times more likely to be death (when a sentence of death was legal). Racial attitudes
that directly influenced sentences were easily uncovered and in some incidences overtly stated (Clarke,
1998; Conley, 1999; Walker et al., 2000). A more recent examination of racial discrimination in the
criminal justice system has produced different results. Direct racial discrimination that dominated
findings by researchers in the first half of the twentieth-century has been largely replaced by a focus on
indirect and contextual evidence of discrimination or at the minimum clear evidence of a significant racial
disparity (Sears, Hetts, Sidanius, and Bobo, 2000; Tayler, 2000; Zatz, 1984). Research indicates that race
is significantly associated with educational level, type of crime committed, likelihood of being in poverty,
and likelihood of being unemployed. Inciardi, McBride, and Rivers (1996) point out that during the
increased criminalization of drugs, crack users received longer sentences than powder cocaine users when
the amounts were relatively equal and that race is directly linked to type of cocaine used (crack cocaine is
more prevalent among African-Americans and powder cocaine is more prevalent among white users). In
these situations, while race is not directly linked to type and length of sentence, race is linked indirectly
Convention