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JUSTFAIR: Look Up How a Federal Judge Has Sentenced People
JUSTFAIR is a public database that links about 600,000 federal sentences to the judges who imposed them.
By Brandon Sample · Updated · Filed under Sentencing articles
JUSTFAIR is a free database that lets anyone look up how federal judges have sentenced people. It pulls major federal sentencing data into one place, so you do not have to dig through several government websites to see a judge's track record.
JUSTFAIR stands for Judicial System Transparency through Federal Archive Inferred Records. It was built by researchers with the Institute for the Quantitative Study of Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity (QSIDE), who described it in a 2020 research paper.
Why it matters
Before JUSTFAIR, this data was public but spread across many government sources. That made it nearly impossible, even for seasoned federal sentencing lawyers, to see what was really going on. In the author's view, JUSTFAIR breaks through those barriers and exposes the problems with federal sentencing.
There are 94 federal district courts in the states and U.S. territories. Each state has at least one, and some have up to four. Sentences for the same crime have long varied by location and by a judge's personal biases, which created huge differences depending on where someone was sentenced.
The federal sentencing guidelines were meant to fix this, but gaps remain, including by race and income. A judge's sentence is reviewed only if someone appeals, and appeals courts rarely find a sentence "unreasonable." The author's conclusion was blunt: the guidelines hardly fixed anything, because nobody has been holding federal judges accountable for their sentencing decisions.
Appeals also do not get into the finer details of sentencing, such as the defendant's personal characteristics. And sentencing judges rarely say on the record how those details played into a sentence. JUSTFAIR includes that data.
What JUSTFAIR shows
JUSTFAIR combines five main sources of government sentencing data, including the U.S. Sentencing Commission, the Federal Judicial Center, and the federal court records system (PACER). It covers about 600,000 cases from 2001 to 2018.
What sets it apart is that it links each sentence to the judge who imposed it, along with details about the person and the crime. That can help the public, lawyers, and researchers see how individual judges sentence. The author saw it as a possible game-changer for holding judges accountable.
For a family, a judge's past sentences can offer useful background, but they are not a prediction. Every case turns on its own facts, the guideline range, and what is presented at sentencing.
Learn more about JUSTFAIR at QSIDE's website.
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