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66 Crime & Delinquency 3 (2020)

handle is hein.journals/cadq66 and id is 1 raw text is: Article Crime & Delinquency 2020, Vol. 66(I) 3-32 Racial Disparities in © The Author(s) 2019 Article reuse guidelines: Feder Sentencing sagepub.com/jou rals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/0011128719828353 Outcomes: Clarifying the journas.sagepub.com/hone/cad Role of Criminal History OGE Travis W. Franklin' and Tri Keah S. Henry' Abstract Racial and ethnic sentencing disparities are frequently conditioned by offender and case characteristics (e.g., gender, crime type). Offenders' criminal history is a potentially important conditioning factor, yet this issue has only been addressed by a small body of research. Moreover, no study has examined this potential conditioning effect among Asian or Native American offenders, and prior research has typically adopted a limited theoretical approach for explaining why criminal history might condition racial disparities. The present study addresses these shortcomings in an analysis of United States Sentencing Commission data for fiscal years 2010-2012. Results indicate that race and ethnicity effects are conditioned by criminal history in important ways. Implications for theory, research, and practice are discussed. Keywords sentencing, disparity, race, ethnicity, criminal history Introduction Equality under the law is a central tenet of the American justice system (see Franklin, 2018; Kleck, 1981). Researchers have assessed court actors' 'Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, TX, USA Corresponding Author: Travis W. Franklin, Associate Professor, Sam Houston State University, P.O. Box 2296, Huntsville, TX 77340, USA. Email: tfranklin@shsu.edu