Katherine A Durante

Biography

My dissertation research uses the National Corrections Reporting Program, a restricted dataset from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and data from multiple county- and state- level sources, to examine racial and ethnic disparities in prison admissions and in sentence lengths. I explore three broad theoretical frameworks, in addition to differences in offending rates: racial threat, economic inequality, and the political and legal climate. I employ hierarchical linear modeling techniques to examine the role of both county- and state- level contextual factors in producing racial inequality in both sentencing outcomes. The Kunz Center for Social Research at the University of Cincinnati awarded me with a grant in support of this research.   Overall, I argue that differences in offending rates between Blacks and Whites and Latinos and Whites cannot fully account for the differences in sentencing outcomes. Indeed, my results suggest that racial threat, class inequality, and the law and political climate, both at the county- and state-level, all play important roles in determining the wide variability in sentencing disparities across U.S. counties. This research is significant because, by focusing on county-level outcomes and several different explanatory frameworks, it provides a more nuanced understanding of how racial and ethnic minorities continue to be overrepresented in prisons, even when controlling for differences in offending and arrest.

Research Interest

Primary interests include criminology, criminal justice, racial and ethnic inequality, alcohol and drugs, and quantitative methods. Secondary interests include sociological theory and law and society.