The sentences involved both felonies and misdemeanors. The analysis used a combination of legally prescribed, case processing, offender-related, and county context factors as predictors of departures from guidelines. Guideline departures included dispositional departures, durational departures below guidelines, and durational departures above guidelines. Results revealed that legally prescribed factors such as offense type and severity and criminal history were the main predictors of decisions to depart from the guidelines, but that departures from guidelines are also the locus of significant extralegal differences involving gender, race, and mode of conviction (guilty plea versus trial). Findings indicated the need for more research to examine the link between local political contexts, court organizational arrangements, workgroup case-processing strategies, sentencing reform strategies, and sources of disparity in sentencing outcomes. Tables, footnotes, appended table, 3 case citations, and 48 references (Author abstract modified)