Race and Federal Sentencing

[I]f one looks closely at only those offenses in which 1000 or more cases were sentenced in FY 2010, one sees that in all but one notable instance, the percentage of offenders who were white is below 50%.  For drug trafficking offenses, for example, only 26% of sentenced offenders were white; for firearm offenses, only 29% of sentenced offenders were white; for fraud offenses, only 47% of sentenced offenders were white.  But for child pornography offenses, a full 89% of sentenced offenders in FY 2010 were white.

From here.

About 10% of immigration offenders are white (a category that makes up a third of the docket), while another third of the docket is made up of drug offenses.  The total federal criminal docket with a race coded defendant has about 75,000 sentenced offenders per year (about 10% of criminal defendants were not statistically coded for race).

Some of this result is due to disaggregation of white collar crimes.  Other majority white offender federal offenses (with less than 1,000 cases per year) are (with percentage white and total number of sentenced offenders of all races shown):

* antitrust (85%, n=13)
* gambling/lottery (77%, n=75)
* environmental/wildlife (77%, n=124)
* food and drug (72%, n=67)
* tax (66%, n=655)
* civil rights (67%, n=58)
* embezzlement (59%, n=404)
* arson (59%, n=75)
* other miscellaneous offenses (53%, n=1288)
* simple drug possession (51%, n=282)
* auto theft (51%, n=91)

The top offenses for which the 20,796 white offenders were sentenced in federal court were:

1.  Drug Trafficing 6,087
2.  Fraud 3,200
3.  Immigration 2,500
4.  Firearms 2,293
5.  Child Pornography 1,665
6.  Larceny 659
7.  Robbery 479

The top offenses for which the 36,293 Hispanic offenders were sentenced in federal court were:

1. Immigration 21,009
2. Drug Trafficking 10,378
3. Fraud 1,190
4. Money Laundering 307

The top offenses for which the 15,613 black offenders were sentenced in federal court were:

1. Drug Trafficking 6,169
2. Firearms 3,961
3. Immigration 463
4. Robbery 428
5. Larceny 422

A large share of the offenders sentenced in federal court for certain offenses were of "other race" despite the fact that this category makes up just 3.6%, most of which is attributable to Native Americans on Indian reservations where state courts do not have jurisdiction over many serious crimes.  These offenses include: murder, manslaughter, sexual abuse, assault, arson, burglary and breaking and entering.