| The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRAIRA) of 1996 required that federal courts increase sentences for several immigration offenses, including offenses that involve the smuggling, transporting, and harboring of unlawful aliens in the United States. While subsequent sentence lengths for these offenders were longer, the proportion of cases sentenced within the designated sentencing range decreased substantially. Given the increasing tide of immigration convictions (particularly for the southwest border states) and the need for prison space to accommodate these offenders, the paper underscores how immigration issues fuel the debate over the competing sentencing principles of just punishment, deterrence, and uniformity. The analysis compares the sentences of unlawful alien smugglers convicted prior to, and following, the changes of the 1996 law to determine whether the observed sentencing patterns result from changes in the type of offenders being sentenced, or from differing decisions and practices of the court and the prosecution in the federal districts. The analysis uses the data files of the U.S. Sentencing Commission for fiscal years 1996 and 1998. |
Updated 05/20/2006