In response to several high-profile violent offenses against children over the past two decades, Congress has enacted several pieces of legislation aimed at increasing punishment for those convicted of federal sex offenses. Coinciding with these enhanced penalties was a demographic shift in the composition of those prosecuted for these offenses. In the federal criminal justice system, sex offenses fall into two main categories: child pornography and sexual abuse. The racial and ethnic makeup of individuals charged for federal sex offenses has significantly changed over the past 15 years. The current study utilizes federal sentencing data from the United States Sentencing Commission for the years 2006 to 2017 to explore the nature of punishment for these offenses over time. We also employ multivariate analyses to examine differences in punishment for the two types of offenses and employ disaggregated analyses by offense type to examine temporal change in racial/ethnic disparities in sentence length and departures from the federal sentencing guidelines. Findings demonstrate that convicted individuals who are Black and Hispanic are receiving harsher sentences over time net of controls for other key predictors such as age, sex, criminal history, and presumptive sentence length. Implications for how legislatively enhanced penalties and changing demographic makeup of those convicted for these offenses may have introduced extra-legal disparity into federal sentencing are further discussed.

为应对过去 20 年间针对儿童的几起备受瞩目的暴力犯罪，国会颁布了几项立法，旨在加大对联邦性犯罪者的惩罚力度。与这些加重处罚同时发生的是因这些罪行被起诉的人的构成发生了人口变化。在联邦刑事司法系统中，性犯罪分为两大类：儿童色情制品和性虐待。在过去的 15 年中，被联邦性犯罪指控的个人的种族和民族构成发生了重大变化。目前的研究利用美国量刑委员会 2006 年至 2017 年的联邦量刑数据来探索随着时间的推移对这些罪行的惩罚性质。我们还采用多变量分析来检查对两种类型犯罪的惩罚差异，并采用按犯罪类型分类的分析来检查种族/民族差异在刑期和偏离联邦量刑指南方面的时间变化。调查结果表明，随着年龄、性别、犯罪历史和推定刑期等其他关键预测因素的控制，黑人和西班牙裔被定罪的个人随着时间的推移正在接受更严厉的判决。进一步讨论了立法加强处罚和改变因这些罪行而被定罪者的人口构成可能如何在联邦量刑中引入法外差异的影响。