Dr. Everett contributes research perspective to sentencing symposium

Dr. Ron Everett, UAA Justice faculty, has been invited to contribute his research perspective for materials for an upcoming sentencing symposium funded by the National Science Foundation. His research on race and sentencing is recognized as influential in the field. Dr. Everett will be sharing his views on past, present and future research on race and sentencing for an overview essay of that topic. The symposium program, "The Past and Future of Empirical Sentencing Research," will be held Sept. 23-24, 2010 at the University of Albany.

The University of Albany School of Criminal Justice website describes the Symposium on Crime and Justice: "The punishment received by those convicted in the criminal justice system is the outcome of a complex set of interactions between actors starting with the initial charge and ending only when the convicted individual is released from supervision. There is a consensus among criminological scholars that the empirical study of this sentencing process has stagnated. The National Science Foundation has agreed to partially fund this symposium to help reinvigorate empirical research in this area by reengaging with other disciplines and reconnecting with the ongoing policy debates about sentencing. We have assembled a top flight group of scholars to review the current state of sentencing research and chart future research directions."

Dr. Everett became involved in race and sentencing research in the early 1990s when he worked as a senior research associate for the United States Sentencing Commission. As a senior research associate, he worked on the congressionally mandated evaluation of the federal sentencing guidelines' impact on federal courts. (The Guidelines were implemented in 1988.) His research on racial bias and sentencing disparity was published while he was a social science analyst at the National Institute of Justice. His articles can be found in the Journal of Quantitative Criminology and Justice Quarterly. Some of the research Dr. Everett has done at UAA include a Quantitative Analysis of Disparities in Juvenile Delinquency Referrals report to the National Institute of Justice. Fellow UAA faculty and director of the UAA Justice Center, Andre Rosay, was also a principal investigator on this project. The report presented the first findings from an extended examination of race, ethnicity and juvenile justice in Anchorage, provided a broad overview of the level of disproportionate minority contact in the Alaska juvenile justice system and examined whether disproportionate minority contact occurs for all minority youth, for both males and females, for both youth referred for new crimes and youth referred for conduct or probation violations, and throughout the Municipality of Anchorage or in specific geographical areas within the Municipality of Anchorage. The aim was to develop a detailed understanding of the scope of disproportionate minority contact, become much better prepared to identify its causes and to develop promising evidence-based solutions.

Learn more about the UAA Justice Center at http://justice.uaa.alaska.edu.