This inquiry explores how data analyses about US Federal sentences have transformed sentencing practice beginning in the mid-1980s. I consider this inquiry an early case of the datafication of law, a pervasive process that translates legal practice into data and embeds it in digital networks so it can be tracked and analyzed in real time. To explore datafication historically and in relation to legal practice and power, I consider it not as an objective and passive undertaking but, rather, as an ideological and performative process that encodes and enacts normative presumptions and desirable futures. The empirical inquiry traverses “levels of analysis” and thus bridges prominent perspectives in sociolegal research. In so doing, I identify four mechanisms that mediate “large-scale” processes and “local” practices: field assembly, symbolic projection, material inscription, and boundaries spanning. Substantively, I show how datafication has not simply described, but also transformed, sentencing practice according to a colorblind-carceral imaginary that strives to fix the present in place. By relentlessly translating decisions into data forms that derive from this carceral imaginary, datafication affects judicial action and partakes in sustaining legacies of oppression. Yet, like other technologies, datafication also reveals dialectic dimensions in opening up to new actors and subjecting its ideological underpinnings to contestation and change.

中文翻译：

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法律的数据化：技术如何编码监狱权力并影响美国的司法实践

这项调查探讨了从 1980 年代中期开始，有关美国联邦判决的数据分析如何改变了判决实践。我认为这项调查是法律数据化的早期案例，这是一个将法律实践转化为数据并将其嵌入数字网络以便实时跟踪和分析的普遍过程。为了从历史上探索数据化以及与法律实践和权力的关系，我认为它不是一种客观和被动的事业，而是一种编码和制定规范性假设和理想未来的意识形态和表演过程。实证研究跨越了“分析层次”，从而连接了社会法学研究中的重要观点。在此过程中，我确定了调解“大规模”过程和“本地”实践的四种机制：现场组装、符号投影、材料铭文，境界跨越。实质上，我展示了数据化如何不仅简单地描述，而且改变了根据色盲监狱想象的量刑实践，该想象力图将现在固定在适当的位置。通过无情地将决定转化为源自这种监狱想象的数据形式，数据化会影响司法行动并参与维持压迫的遗产。然而，与其他技术一样，数据化也揭示了向新参与者开放和使其意识形态基础受到争论和改变的辩证维度。通过无情地将决定转化为源自这种监狱想象的数据形式，数据化会影响司法行动并参与维持压迫的遗产。然而，与其他技术一样，数据化也揭示了向新参与者开放和使其意识形态基础受到争论和改变的辩证维度。通过无情地将决定转化为源自这种监狱想象的数据形式，数据化会影响司法行动并参与维持压迫的遗产。然而，与其他技术一样，数据化也揭示了向新参与者开放和使其意识形态基础受到争论和改变的辩证维度。