Prior sentencing research has examined the treatment of White, Black, and Hispanic defendants; however, little attention has been paid towards other racial/ethnic groups, like American Indian defendants. Moreover, a majority of sentencing research has focused men’s outcomes, disregarding the treatment and outcomes of women. Therefore, this paper examines the outcomes of American Indian women in federal district courts using United States Sentencing Commission (USSC) data from FY2015 to FY2019. We situate our research within an intersectional framework and use the chivalry, evil women, and focal concerns perspectives to understand the sentencing outcomes of American Indian women. Our results indicate that American Indian women are similarly disadvantaged at the incarceration, and sentence length decisions as other racial/ethnic groups.
AlvarezA.BachmanR. D. (1996). American Indians and sentencing disparity: An Arizona test. Journal of Criminal Justice, 24(6), 549–561.
2.
BachmanR.ZaykowskiH.KallymyerR.PoteyevaM.LanierC. (2008). Violence against American Indian and Alaska Native women and the criminal justice response: What is known (Report no. 223691). National Criminal Justice Reference Service. https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/223691.pdf
3.
BergerB. R. (2008). Red: Racism and the American Indian. UCLA Law Review, 56, 591.
4.
BirdS. E. (1999). Gendered construction of the American Indian in popular media. Journal of Communication, 49(3), 61–83.
5.
BlochK. R.EngenR. L.ParrottaK. L. (2014). The intersection of race and gender: An examination of sentencing outcomes in North Carolina. Criminal Justice Studies, 27(4), 419–438.
6.
BlumloD. (2017). Pocahontas, Uleleh, & Hononegah: The archetype of the American Indian Princess. Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, 110(2), 129–153.
7.
BrennanP. K. (2006). Sentencing female misdemeanants: An examination of the direct and indirect effects of race/ethnicity. Justice Quarterly, 23(1), 60–95.
8.
BushwayS.JohnsonB. D.SlocumL. A. (2007). Is the magic still there? The use of the Heckman two-step correction for selection bias in criminology. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 23(2), 151–178.
9.
CaninoI. A.CaninoG. J. (1993). Chapter 16: Psychiatric care of Puerto Ricans. In GawA.C. (Ed.), Culture, Ethnicity and Mental Illness (Vol. 1, pp. 467–499). American Psychiatric Press.
10.
CanizalesS. L.VallejoJ. A. (2021). Latinos & racism in the trump era. Daedalus, 150(2), 150–164.
11.
CollinsP. H. (1990). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and empowerment. Routledge.
12.
CollinsP. H. (2000). Gender, black feminism, and black political economy. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 568(1), 41–53.
13.
CrawfordC. (2000). Gender, race, and habitual offender sentencing in Florida. Criminology, 38(1), 263–280.
14.
CrawfordC.ChiricosT.KleckG. (1998). Race, racial threat, and sentencing of habitual offenders. Criminology, 36(3), 481–512.
15.
CrenshawK. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989(1), 139–167.
16.
CrenshawK. (1991). Mapping the margins: Identity politics, intersectionality, and violence against women. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241–1299.
17.
CrenshawK. W. (2012). From private violence to mass incarceration: Thinking intersectionally about women, race, and social control. UCLA Law Review, 59(6), 1418–1472.
18.
CroisyS. (2017). Fighting colonial violence in “Indian Country”: Deconstructing racist sexual stereotypes of Native American Women in American popular culture and history. SAES.
19.
DalyK.Chesney-LindM. (1988). Feminism and criminology. Justice Quarterly, 5(4), 497–538.
20.
DeerS. (2004). Federal Indian law and violent crime: Native women and children at the mercy of the state. Social Justice, 31(98), 17–30.
21.
DoernerJ. K.DemuthS. (2010). The independent and joint effects of race/ethnicity, gender, and age on sentencing outcomes in US federal courts. Justice Quarterly, 27(1), 1–27.
22.
DoernerJ. K.DemuthS. (2014). Gender and sentencing in the federal courts: Are women treated more leniently?Criminal Justice Policy Review, 25(2), 242–269.
23.
FarnworthM.TeskeR. H.Jr. (1995). Gender differences in felony court processing: Three hypotheses of disparity. Women & Criminal Justice, 6(2), 23–44.
24.
FrankelM. E. (1972). Lawlessness in sentencing. University of Cincinnati Law Review, 41, 1–54.
25.
FranklinT. W. (2013). Sentencing Native Americans in US federal courts: An examination of disparity. Justice Quarterly, 30(2), 310–339.
26.
FranklinT. W. (2015). Race and ethnicity effects in federal sentencing: A propensity score analysis. Justice Quarterly, 32(4), 653–679.
27.
FranklinT. W. (2018). The state of race and punishment in America: Is justice really blind?Journal of Criminal Justice, 59, 18–28.
28.
GetmanK. A. (1984). Sexual control in the slaveholding South: The implementation and maintenance of a racial caste system. Harvard Women’s Law Journal, 7, 115.
29.
GiddingsP. (1984). When and where I enter: The impact of Black women on race and sex in America. Bantam Books.
30.
GilbertS. L.WrightE. M.RichardsT. N. (2021). Decolonizing VAWA 2021: A step in the right direction for protecting Native American women. Feminist Criminology.
31.
GriffinT.WooldredgeJ. (2006). Sex-based disparities in felony dispositions before versus after sentencing reform in Ohio. Criminology, 44(4), 893–923.
32.
HallE.SimkusA. (1975). Inequality in the types of sentences received by Native Americans and Whites. Criminology, 13(2), 199–222.
33.
HarrisA. P. (1990). Race and essentialism in feminist legal theory. Stanford Law Review, 42(3), 581.
34.
HawkinsD. F. (1981). Causal attribution and punishment for crime. Deviant Behavior, 2(3), 207–230.
35.
HerzogS.OregS. (2008). Chivalry and the moderating effect of ambivalent sexism: Individual differences in crime seriousness judgments. Law and Society Review, 42(1), 45–74.
36.
HooksB. (1981). Ain’t I a woman Black women and feminism. Pluto Press.
37.
HuntB.HarringtonC. F. (2008). The impending educational crisis for American Indians: Higher education at the crossroads. Journal of Multicultural, Gender and Minority Studies, 2(2), 1–11.
38.
HuttonC.PommersheimF.FeimerS. (1989). I fought the law and the law won: A report on women and disparate sentencing in South Dakota. New England Journal on Criminal & Civil Confinement, 15, 177.
39.
JohnsonB. D. (2006). The multilevel context of criminal sentencing: Integrating judge-and county-level influences. Criminology, 44(2), 259–298.
40.
Koons-WittB. A. (2002). The effect of gender on the decision to incarcerate before and after the introduction of sentencing guidelines. Criminology, 40(2), 297–328.
41.
Koons-WittB. A.SevignyE. L.BurrowJ. D.HesterR. (2014). Gender and sentencing outcomes in South Carolina: Examining the interactions with race, age, and offense type. Criminal Justice Policy Review, 25(3), 299–324.
42.
KramerK. L.WangX. (2019). Assessing cumulative disadvantage against minority female defendants in state courts. Justice Quarterly, 36(7), 1284–1313.
43.
LajimodiereD. K. (2013). American Indian females and stereotypes: Warriors, leaders, healers, feminists; not drudges, princesses, prostitutes. Multicultural Perspectives, 15(2), 104–109.
44.
LopezJ. P. (2013). Speaking with them or speaking for them: A conversation about the effect of stereotypes in the Latina/Hispanic women’s experiences in the United States. New Horizons in Adult Education and Human Resource Development, 25(2), 99–106.
45.
LópezV.Chesney-LindM. (2014). Latina girls speak out: Stereotypes, gender and relationship dynamics. Latino Studies, 12(4), 527–549.
46.
LujanC. C. (1996). Women warriors: American Indian women, crime, and alcohol. Women & Criminal Justice, 7(1), 9–33.
47.
LyubymovaS. (2019). Stereotyping Indigeneity: The case of Native American. Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 11(2), 1–19.
48.
MacDougallP. M. (1994). Grandmother, daughter, princess, squaw: Native American female stereotypes in historical perspective. Maine History, 34(1), 22–39.
49.
MgadmiM. (2009). Black women’s identity: Stereotypes, respectability and passionlessness (1890-1930). Revue LISA/LISA e-journal. Littératures, Histoire des Idées, Images, Sociétés du Monde Anglophone–Literature, History of Ideas, Images and Societies of the English-speaking World, 7(1), 40–55.
50.
MerskinD. (2010). The s-word: discourse, stereotypes, and the American Indian woman. The Howard Journal of Communications, 21(4), 345–366.
51.
MiederW. (1993). “The only good Indian is a dead Indian”: History and meaning of a proverbial stereotype. The Journal of American Folklore, 106(419), 38.
52.
MitchellO. (2005). A meta-analysis of race and sentencing research: Explaining the inconsistencies. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 21(4), 439–466.
53.
OshanaM. (1981). Native American women in westerns: Reality and myth. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 6(3), 46–50.
54.
PokorakJ. J. (2006). Rape as a badge of slavery: The legal history of, and remedies for, prosecutorial race-of-victim charging disparities. Nevada Law Journal, 7, 1.
55.
PortillosE. L. (1998). Latinos and Latinas: Latinos, gangs, and drugs. In MannC. R.ZatzM. S. (Eds.), Images of color, images of crime (pp. 212–221). Roxbury.
56.
Redner-VeraE. N. (2019). Examining the treatment of American Indian defendants in United States federal courts [Doctoral dissertation, Arizona State University].
57.
SandefurG. D. (1989). American Indian reservations: The first underclass areas?Focus, 12(1), 37–41.
58.
SchifferM. A. (2014). Women of color and crime: A critical race theory perspective to address disparate prosecution. Arizona Law Review, 56, 1203.
59.
SellinT. (1928). The Negro criminal a statistical note. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 140(1), 52–64.
60.
SpohnC. (2000). Thirty years of sentencing reform: The quest for a racially neutral sentencing process. Criminal Justice, 3, 427–501.
61.
SpohnC. C.BrennanP. K.KimB. (2018). Chapter 9: Racial and ethnic disparities among female offenders adjudicated in federal courts: Explicating the patterns of disparities using a path model. In UlmerJ. T.BradleyM. S. (Eds.), Handbook on Punishment Decisions Locations of Disparity (pp. 211–238). Routledge.
62.
SteffensmeierD.KramerJ.StreifelC. (1993). Gender and imprisonment decisions. Criminology, 31(3), 411–446.
63.
SteffensmeierD.UlmerJ.KramerJ. (1998). The interaction of race, gender, and age in criminal sentencing: The punishment cost of being young, black, and male. Criminology, 36(4), 763–798.
64.
TillyerR.HartleyR. D.WardJ. T. (2015). Differential treatment of female defendants: Does criminal history moderate the effect of gender on sentence length in federal narcotics cases?Criminal Justice and Behavior, 42(7), 703–721.
65.
UlmerJ. T.ParkerB. R. (2020). Federal sentencing of Hispanic defendants in changing immigrant destinations. Justice Quarterly, 37(3), 541–570.
66.
UlmerJ. T.LightM. T.KramerJ. H. (2011). Racial disparity in the wake of the Booker/Fanfan decision: An alternative analysis to the USSC’s 2010 report. Criminology & Public Policy, 10, 1077.
67.
WarrenP. Y.CochranJ.ShieldsR. T.FeldmeyerB.BaileyC.StewartE. A. (2020). Sentencing departures and female defendants: Assessing the effects of racial and ethnic threat. Crime & Delinquency, 66(1), 59–92.
68.
WestC. (2012). Mammy, Jezebel, Sapphire, and their homegirls: Developing an “oppositional gaze” toward the images of black women. In ChrislerJ. C.GoldenC.RozeeP. D. (Eds.), Lectures on the psychology of women (4th ed., pp. 286–299). Waveland Press.
69.
WilmotK.DeLoneM. (2010). Sentencing of Native Americans: A multistage analysis under the Minnesota sentencing guidelines. Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice, 8(3), 151–180.
