Classical Perspective And Mandatory Sentencing Act

Ever since the first prison opened in the United States in 1790, incarceration has been the center of the nations criminal justice system. Over this 200 year period many creative alternatives to incarceration have been tried, and many at a much lower cost than imprisonment. It wasn’t until the late 1980’s when our criminal justice systems across the country began experiencing a problem with overcrowding of facilities. This problem forced lawmakers to develop new options for sentencing criminal offenders.

Prominent among them is the reduction of the prison sentences for nonviolent and low-level drug crimes. However, this is not enough. “Even if we released everyone imprisoned for drugs tomorrow, the united states would still have 1.7 million people behind bars.” That massive statistic comes as a great shock to readers, as they only now realize the true urgency of the issue. The authors acknowledge that “half the people in state prisons are there for a violent crime.” However, “not all individuals convicted for a violent crime are alike.” They are convicted for different levels of violence: some are mass murderers or serial killers, while others are “battered spouses who struck back at their abusers.” Mauer and Cole also refer to studies that found that longer sentences are not better deterrents, as most serious offenses were committed under the influence of drugs or alcohol. The authors call for acknowledgement that excessively long sentences are merely a waste of money and totally

The United States’ prison population is currently number one in the world. As a nation that proclaims freedom for citizens, the United States houses more than one million more persons than Russian and almost one million more persons than China. Currently, the United States makes up five percent of the world’s population and imprisons twenty-five percent of the world’s inmate population. Drug offenders who committed no act of violence make up a large portion of the inmates in the United States. County, State, and Federal prisons are so over populated that the private sector has opened up corporate facilities to house convicted persons. The cost each year to hold a person rises, placing larger financial demands on the judicial system. The Judicial System of the United States should reevaluate the sentencing guidelines for non-violent drug offenders to alleviate the high number of people in the prison system.

Minorities in these urban areas have a hard time finding employment that could support their family efficiently. Most end up dropping out of school and join or are forced to join gangs. They are more likely to turn to crime as a means of survival which increases their chances of building a criminal history. This type of criminal activity also ties back into the Three Strikes Law (Nicosia, MacDonald, & Arkes. 2013) which states that the offender will be incarcerated on their third offense, no matter how minor the charge. The lack of rehabilitative resources in the criminal justice system leads to repeat offenders also. Although it should not be the responsibility of those in society who are doing the right thing to pay for services for those who are incarcerated, we are doing ourselves an injustice if we don’t. If we are not providing rehabilitative classes, vocational/job training, or some type of counseling while prisoners are incarcerated, we are defeating the purpose of locking them up. Criminal justice referrals account for almost 37% of drug treatment admissions (Nicosia, MacDonald, & Arkes. 2013. p. 78). If we don’t address the issues that got them incarcerated in the first place, they will turn back to the only life they know that provided fast money. I

Congress has steadily expanded the size and scope of the federal criminal code since the 1980’s. During this time, the federal prison population has explored and caused serious strains on federal finances and resources. Since the 1980’s, the federal government added approximately 2,000 new crimes to the criminal code. The federal imprisonment rate has grown by 500 percent and annual spending on the federal prison system increased almost 600 percent. During the 1980’s, the federal prison system cost around $970 million to operate, but today costs billions of dollars. Similarly, most states recorded drastic imprisonment and associated cost increases over the past 30 years. However, most states have reduced their prison rates through

The number of prisoners in United States prisons has increased and are still growing day-by-day. The Sentencing Project, an organization that fights for a fair and effective U.S. justice system by promoting reforms in sentencing policy, addresses unjust racial disparities and practices in its article “Trends in U.S. Corrections.” They write, “The United States is the world's leader in incarceration with 2.2 million people currently in the nation's prisons and jails — a 500% increase over the last forty years ”(The Sentencing Project 1). According to The Sentencing Project statistics, the number of prisoners has dramatically increased in the past four decades,

In order to start and continue to accomplish the German and Norweigan approach to incarceration the U.S. must create new sentencing models in order to stop mass incarceration. The U.S. centers its system on incapacitation, removing the possibility for the individual to commit further crimes, and punitive sanctions to punish individuals. By 2012, the prison population grew by 705 percent, meaning just a little under 1.4 million inmates. This increase in inmates can be analyzed in the harsh sentences for nonviolent crimes, such as drug possession. Mandatory minimums are responsible for the increase, which is why in order for these methods to be effective, they must be gotten rid of and a new method for punishing certain crimes should be established.

Mandatory sentencing has been a big driver in the large population of incarcerated individuals in the United States. District attorneys are more aggressive in how they file charges against the arrestee. While the country has seen a decline in crime, new

I will obtain different peer reviewed sources to examine and interpret both facts and opinions provided by the authors. I will also use some web articles and books to gather more information on mandatory minimum sentencing and its effects on society. With this in mind, I will

In the past four decades, there has been a staggering increase in the United States prison population at the local and state level. Currently there are 2.2 million people in the nation’s prisons and jails that has added up to a 500% increase over 40 years (The sentencing project). The cause of this prison growth is a variety of laws and punitive sentencing policies that were initiated starting in the early 1970’s. Policies such as harsh drug penalties for non-violent crimes, Mandatory Minimum Maximum sentences and the Three Strikes law have all contributed to America’s current problem of mass incarceration.

The United States spends nearly $81 billion per year on corrections, but where is this money coming from, where is it going, and is it actually reducing crime rates? Crime rates in the United States have fallen since 1991 and murder rates have also fallen by half in last 25 years, however the prison population has increased by 500% in the last 40 years. Increase in the number of incarcerated citizens also lead to an increase in new prisons around the country and also the crippling of the american justice system. As the author of Wages of Rebellion describes, the prison-industrial-system as the most

With regard to solutions, considerable attention has been paid to the federal prison system. Between 1980 and 2013, the federal prison population increased by 790% from 24,640 to 219,298. Since peaking, the number of federal prisoners has lowered to 190,452 today. The decline is the result of criminal justice reform efforts in the past few years, such as former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s modification of the Department of Justice’s charging policies in 2010 and the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s passage of Amendment 782 (“drugs minus two”) in 2014. In spite of their moderate success, such responses have failed to

Of the nearly nine million people incarcerated worldwide, the United States houses over two million inmates in its federal, state, and local facilities. While the goal of the judicial system is to enforce the law and protect the people, it comes at a price to taxpaying citizens at approximately thirty-nine billion dollars annually. The purpose of this research is to clearly define the required expenditures of the prison system, identify anomalies in court sentencing at the federal, state and local levels, and pinpoint cost-savings to reduce the financial burden to tax-paying citizens.

One of my biggest concerns with this type of approach is the fact that we can possibly start to prioritize what crime to go after, leaving other forms of deviance unaddressed, furthermore not every person weighs what they do on a scale of "pleasure and pain", so in this vein, it might not accurately deter crime in a modern society such as the one we currently live in. It puts the responsibility on the man, on his or her free will to make decisions and will be viewed equally under the law, thus the problem with this is the fact that not everyone is equal under the law, not everyone has the capacity to reason, and being this a fact, people may commit crimes to irrational decisions and the classical theory offers no answer to this. Furthermore, such as people with mental illnesses or children so they cannot be tried in the same manner. I do not believe you can reconcile the classical school and any redeeming factors, while Beccaria's studies laid the groundwork for Criminology as we know it today, it on its own is too simplistic for a complex society.

The Classical Theory focuses mainly on the individual and choices. Each individual makes decisions based on cost and benefit. Using Classical Theory, human behavior is explained in terms of the attempt to maximize pleasure and minimize pain (Williams & McShane 2004) and because the basis is for the concept of deterrence.