Pros And Cons Of Indeterminate Sentencing

When it comes to the criminal trial process, the last step those who are found guilty face before they are incarcerated is receiving their sentencing. There is more to a judge handing down a sentence than just giving the convicted person a time limit for how long he has to stay in incarcerated. When it comes to the different ranges of sentencing, there are five goals of contemporary criminal sentencing, the nature of structured sentencing must be understood and its positives explained, and determinate sentencing must be understood. Sentencing is not a cut and dry process. There is a lot that goes into it that many do not know about.

Since many inmates return back into our communities, the Reformatory Era helped decrease the impact of imprisonment on long term inmates as see under the Principle of Normalization. This principle explained how conditions of prisoners should correspond as much as possible to the living conditions in the general society. A solution during this era was parole. This gave the offender the opportunity for early release based on their behavior. Offenders were given a minimum and maximum period of incarceration which is also known as indeterminate sentencing. New York adopted indeterminate sentencing during 1876. Since prisoners had indeterminate sentencing, they could be paroled and able to achieve goals that were set to them by their “handler”. Probation soon spread all around the United States giving different approaches to they way criminal justice policies were

Mass incarceration is a major problem in the United States. Since the tough on crime movement that began to emphasize more punishment and creating new policies such as; three strikes law, truth-in sentencing laws, mandatory sentencing, and determinate sentencing, our prisons and jails have become overcrowded. The three strikes law increases the prison sentence of an offender convicted of three felonies or serious crime. Usually the punishment ranges from a minimum of 25 years to life in prison. The truth-in sentencing laws require the offender to serve a substantial amount of their prison sentence (usually around 85 percent) before they are eligible for release on parole. The mandatory sentencing requires a minimum period of incarceration that the offender must serve regardless of the history of the offender or the nature of the circumstance. These get tough policies have implicated longer prison and jail sentences and has reduced the amount of discretion that the judges, parole/probation officers and prison and jail administrators. These actions have consequently increased the prison and jail population, which causes an increase in money spent on jails and prisons.

Although, there is no evidence that suggests mandatory sentencing is effective at decreasing crime rate but ample evidence of its long-term felonious results. The US and other jurisdictions are an example of the ineffective results of this regime, choosing to decrease the use mandatory sentencing regimes because they don’t work.

This essay explains sentencing in the United States Criminal Justice system. The objectives of punishment in the United States corrections is to help deter crime and to ensure reoffenders don’t reoffend. Sentencing impacts the corrections system and society in a positive manor by eliminating offenders out of the community. Sentencing may include one of the following: probation, fines, prison, community service, probation and so forth depending on the state you reside and the type of offense you commit. Each crime committed doesn’t have a set sentence, therefore they are determined on a case to case basis. The main goal of the criminal justice system is to defend the community and serve justice. Sentencing plays a vital role in the Criminal Justice system.

In today’s society crimes in the United State are growing each day, and the major aspect of the U.S criminal justice system is the punishment imposed on those who committed crimes in our communities. One method of sentencing criminals was the establishment of the mandatory minimum sentencing. During the early days of the republic, specific sentences were carried out for certain crime and early mandatory sentences the forms of punishment used at the time stretched from ducking stools/cucking stools for disorderly women and dishonest tradesmen in England, Soctland to hanging for convicted murderers. However, in recent years, evidence gathered have shown that the federal mandatory minimum sentencing were not in effect for reaching the goals of the criminal justice system. Chief Justice William Rehnquist has previously stated that “these statutes are “perhaps a good example of the law of unintended consequences. This essay will discuss the history, goals, benefits, and negatives of the American Judicial Systems Mandatory Sentencing.

2014). The official authorities in office that make legal decisions and judgments that are using indeterminate sentencing often employ statutes that identify clearly minimum and maximum terms (Siegel, L. 2014). Equally, they also permit judicial discretion to fix the actual sentence given within these guidelines (Siegel, L. 2014). Even though rehabilitation and parole have been under heavy attack by those who argue that criminals should be punished and not overprotected (Siegel, L. 2014). When said and done the indeterminate sentence is still the most widely used types of sentence the determinate sentencing continues to be favored in nearly one-third of the states (Siegel, L. and Bartollas, C.

This paper will attempt to explain the importance of proportionality with regards to criminal sentencing, increase understanding of the reasons our sentencing procedures continually fluctuate, identify three groups of individuals protected under the 8th Amendment from receiving a death sentence for a capital offense, attempts to explain the relationship between sentencing and the 6th Amendment, and will discuss the origin of the felony murder rule and its applicability.

In the last few decades, there has been an increase in the number of individuals who have been incarcerated in both federal and state prisons. Indeed, research has shown that harsher sentencing policies and more punitive laws have resulted in the incarceration of more than 2.3 million people in the varied jails and prisons; thereby making the United States the leader as far as incarceration is concerned. Incarceration and sentencing systems have conventionally been aimed at having varying goals including rehabilitation, incapacitation, punishment and deterrence. Recent decades have seen the enactment of sentencing policy initiatives with the aim of enhancing the criminal justice systems deterrent effect.

The criminal justice system in the United States is not a single system, but rather a combined network of systems, reconfigured as one. This means that communication and transparency is even more important than it might be within a more one dimensional system. Mandatory minimum sentencing laws require binding prison terms for people convicted of certain federal and state crimes. These inflexible, “one-size-fits-all” sentencing laws may seem like a quick-fix solution for crime, but they undermine justice by preventing judges from fitting the punishment to the individual and the circumstances of their offenses. One question being considered within the legal community now is, while new crimes are being recognized as they are committed, should mandatory minimums really be “mandatory”, or should they be “suggested”, and serve more as a guideline, while the actual sentence is left to the discretion of the court? Not all crime is created equal and motive, or lack thereof, are factors that should play a role in the court’s determination of an appropriate sentence, should one in fact be imposed

Mandatory penalties have not always been a central feature of the U.S. criminal justice system (Subramanian, Ram and Delaney R, 2014). Until the 1980s, sentencing in the United

Another example is if two people commit a crime and one person goes to prison while the other only has to do community service is not fair at all. Both people committed the crime by their free will because they chose to commit the crime for their pleasure. Parole uses two strategies to support classicalism. The two strategies that support classicism are indeterminate and determinate sentencing. Indeterminate sentencing the judge enforces a prison term that has both a minimum and maximum sentence. The parole board gets to decide on their release date based on how good the prisoners have been. In this type of strategy, folks who commit the same type of crime might get different sentences. Since indeterminate sentencing was dislike, determinate sentencing was adopted. What is determinate sentencing? Determinate sentencing is a sentence having a specific number of years expected to be in prison. Determinate sentencing promotes good time; ranging 15-50 percent off the sentence to encourage prison discipline. Meaning that if an offender is good while in prison her or she will get out of prison earlier than their original sentencing. There are different models for

(Zhang, Y., Zhang, L., Vaughn, M. (2009). Determinate prison sentences or mandatory-minimum sentencing seems like it would discourage criminals from committing crimes because one would think that with harsher sentences would be likely to deter criminals from breaking the law. In the 1970s, indeterminate sentencing was used frequently, in most states judges and parole boards used wide discretion in sentencing offenders. (Zhang, Y., Zhang, L., Vaughn, M. (2009). As it stands, the number of prisoners in the US in 2017 is ten times as much when compared to pre -1971, while the overall population rates have increased only by a third. Half of these prisoners (51%) are jailed for non-violent offenses (World Prison Brief, 2015). The existing number of prisons is not enough to hold and adequately maintain its numerous populations. Many of them are

Judicial discretion was prevalent over the first half of the last three decades, but has been regulated by legislature since 1984. Discretion by definition is the authorization of deciding as one thinks fit, absolutely or within limits (Ntanda, 1999). Indeterminate sentencing, traditionally, has afforded judges considerable discretion over the resolve of criminal sentencing. “While such discretion theoretically allows judges to tailor sentences to the circumstances of individual crimes and criminals, thereby achieving a sort of ex post fairness, it also permits variation in sentences that may not be warranted by the observable facts of the case, reflecting instead the judge’s own preferences” (Miceli, 2008, p.207). The punishment

This belief indicated that if offenders could not be rehabilitated then they should be punished and it was time to get tough on crime. Within a relatively short time parole was attacked and the individual approach of indeterminate sentencing, or release by the authority of a parole board was abolished in 16 states (Rhine, Smith, and Jackson, 1991) and some form of determinate sentencing was adopted in all 50 states (Mackenzie, 2000)].