Disparity: The Normative and Empirical Failure of the Federal Guidelines
When viewed from any coherent normative perspective, the Federal Sentencing Guidelines have failed to reduce disparity and probably have increased it. Even on paper, these Guidelines often fail to treat like offenders alike, and the Guidelines are worse in practice than on paper. The luck of the judicial draw appears to determine the sentences offenders serve as much as or more than it did before the Guidelines; the region of the country in which an offender is sentenced now makes a greater difference than it did before the Guidelines; and racial and gender disparities have increased. Part I of this Article emphasizes that sentencing disparity is a partly