Interpretations of the research findings show that African-American drug offenders as a whole were viewed as particularly threatening or, through the lens of focal concerns theory, more culpable for their crimes, more of a danger to their communities and were also penalized in light of practical constraints and considerations. These trends were enhanced for African-American offenders who were male and young, and persisted across both the in/out and sentence length stages. In contrast, for Hispanics, unfavorable judicial attributions and perceptions of threat were more limited, being restricted only to males and the in/out decision. Focal concerns and threat perceptions also differed according to age with Hispanic males aged 31 to 40 being especially likely to receive incarceration, while African-American males aged 22 to 30 were more likely to be imprisoned and to receive longer sentences. Based on these results, it appears that minority males are penalized for belonging to the "dangerous class," representing greater perceived threat to elites and receiving more negative attributions through judicial focal concerns. Theory and research on sentencing outcomes among racial/ethnic groups has lately witnessed a number of refinements. Using a random sample of Texas felony drug offenders sentenced during the height of the United States War on Drugs (the peak of President Reagan-President Bush drug war), hypotheses regarding the effects of race/ethnicity on sentencing outcomes including conditional effects of gender and age, were tested. Tables, notes and references