In the spring of 2019, I gave the keynote speech at Georgetown Law for the American Criminal Law Review’s symposium on Women’s Rights in the Criminal Justice System. As highlighted throughout this Symposium Issue, speakers dis-cussed some of the seemingly endless ways the criminal justice system dispa-rately impacts women. The issue that stood out to me most during my time on the bench was the unfair and often illogical impact the now-advisory Sentencing Guidelines impose on women. As I write below, it is far past time for the Sentencing Commission and Congress to recognize that disparity in sentencing may not be unwarranted at all when it comes to male and female offenders. In fact, it may be critical to reflect the real differences between them—the drivers of their criminality, the triggers for their recidivism, and the mechanisms for their rehabilitation. But sentencing is not the only place in which there must be change. This Symposium Issue sets out to address many of the other issues that lead to inequality at nearly every stage of the criminal process.

中文翻译：

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妇女与量刑

2019 年春天，我在乔治城法学院为美国刑法评论关于刑事司法系统中的妇女权利研讨会做了主旨演讲。正如本专题研讨会所强调的那样，发言人讨论了刑事司法系统对女性产生不同影响的一些看似无穷无尽的方式。在我担任法官期间，对我来说最突出的问题是现在的量刑指南对女性施加的不公平且通常不合逻辑的影响。正如我在下面所写的那样，量刑委员会和国会早就认识到，在涉及男性和女性罪犯时，量刑上的差异可能并非毫无根据。事实上，反映他们之间的真正差异可能是至关重要的——他们犯罪的驱动因素、他们再犯的诱因、以及他们的康复机制。但量刑并不是唯一必须改变的地方。本专题讨论会旨在解决在刑事诉讼程序的几乎每个阶段导致不平等的许多其他问题。