First Nations Peoples and Judicial Sentencing: Main Effects and the Impact of Contextual Variability

Over-representation of First Nations peoples throughout criminal justice systems is an ongoing critical public policy issue. Judicial sentencing is a pivotal process, which has complex relationships with legal and extra-legal factors. In this study, we use data of serious offences from Queensland’s lower and higher courts from 2009 to 2010. First, logistic regression is used to consider the main effect of Indigenous status on the decision to imprison. Second, conjunctive analyses are used to determine whether contextual variability can illustrate when sentencing disparities occur. Results show the main effect of Indigenous status remained statistically significant in both court levels after controlling for variables. However, contextual variability influenced both the magnitude and direction of the effect of Indigenous status on sentencing.