judge robert halsey, a justice of the superior court of massachusetts. and brian faust, director of research insight law, an organization that has done a major study of sentencing disparities. mr. faust, you have studied how judges, in fact, make up their sentences. how much disparity there among judges in determining long a person goes to prison? well, jim, actually, there's a substantial amount in the research that we've done in research been reported in scores, if not of studies that have been published both before after our work. the evidence has been quite unmistakable of the existence sentencing disparity, and it has resulted both from studies that have looked at actual sentencing decisions and studies that given case history information the same for the same case to a group of judges, asking them what sentence they should give. in both kinds of studies both in our work and in work. that's been done before and after our work. the finding been substantial disparity. me give you two examples. in washington d.c. in 1974, there were 28 judges who gave