Psychology And The Legal System. Paper 1. With Recent Legislative

If mass incarceration is a cancer of society, mandatory minimum sentencing laws are the tumors that exacerbate society’s condition. These mandatory minimum sentencing laws require a certain length of prison time if

Punishment vs. Rehabilitation Brenda A. Dove AJS/502 Version I September 10, 2012 John V. Baiamonte, Jr. Ph.D. Punishment vs. Rehabilitation Punishment versus Rehabilitation, there has been many debates on the effectiveness of punishment compared to the effectiveness of rehabilitation of convicted offenders in prison and under community supervision. If an individual commits a crime serious enough

Alternatives to Incarceration 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.

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

The United States prison population has grown seven-fold over the past forty years, and many Americans today tend to believe that the high levels of incarceration in our country stem from factors such as racism, socioeconomic differences, and drugs. While these factors have contributed to the incarceration rate present in our country today, I argue that the most important reason our country has such a high incarceration rate is the policy changes that have occurred since the 1970s. During this time, the United States has enacted policy changes that have produced an astounding rise in the use of imprisonment for social control. These policy changes were enacted in order to achieve greater consistency, certainty, and severity and include sentencing laws such as determinate sentencing, truth-in-sentencing, mandatory minimum sentencing, and three strikes laws (National Research Council 2014). Furthermore, I argue that mandatory sentencing has had the most significant effect on the incarceration rate.

As Rothman (1980) and many others have pointed out, this ideal system was never implemented as intended. Although the contours of the correctional system changed—the juvenile court, indeterminate sentencing, probation, parole, and discretion became integral features of this system—the resources and knowledge needed to provide effective treatment to offenders were in short supply. Cullen and Gendreau (2000).

“Inter-judge sentencing disparity, in the view of sentencing reformers, offends important rule of law principles, erodes respect for the courts, and undermines the deterrent effect of criminal law.” (Scott, 4) The Federal Sentencing Guidelines, were created by the United States Sentencing Commission, were put in place to minimize unwarranted disparity among the sentences handed out by judges. These same guidelines that helped to decrease disparity among the sentences that same offenders received or did not receive, were made advisory in a serious of decisions from 2005 to 2007. (Scott, 1) Giving too much power to judges, through the advisory of the federal sentencing guidelines, has since created a surge in inter-judge disparities. Unwarranted

While the United States’ justice system has been a model for many countries around the world, the injustice of certain aspects in our court’s system is prominent. Mandatory minimums are just one example the of injustice in our justice system. The Supreme Court has “…casted doubt on the constitutionality of the federal sentencing guidelines used for nearly two decades” (Kenneth Jost, 2004), despite this, nothing has been done to correct it. And while the idea of mandatory minimums is a good thing, they don’t work in the American justice system or in current American society.

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.

Oregon’s Measure 11, was a mandatory minimum sentencing policy passed in 1994, which imposed long mandatory prison terms for sixteen designated violent and sex-related offenses, prohibited “earned time,” and provided for mandatory waiver of youthful offenders to adult court. Merritt, N. Fain, Tuner, S. (2006). This policy had some negative

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

The truth-in-sentencing law eliminates or restricts inmates from being eligible for parole and receiving good-time credits (Ditton & Wilson, 1999). Through the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 the United States’ Congress authorized funding to build more jails and state prisons (Ditton & Wilson, 1999). In 1998 twenty seven states, as well as, the District of Columbia received incentive grants for meeting the eligibility criteria for their Truth-in-Sentencing programs (Ditton & Wilson, 1999). The last three decades of sentencing reform includes: indeterminate sentencing, determinate sentencing, mandatory minimum sentences, sentencing guidelines, and truth-in-sentencing (Ditton & Wilson, 1999).

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

The reason for wanting parole to be abolished in the early 1900’s was because society as a whole did not feel that prisons and the parole system did not rehabilitate offenders enough to reduce recidivism (Schmalleger & Smykla, 2015). Many felt that prisoners that did not deserve to be paroled were being released because of a corrupt and inadequate system. The members of the parole board as well as the parole officers were not trained enough to make the decision to release prisoners early as well as supervise them once they were released. Today, many of the states have abolished discretionary parole for several reasons. The first reason is that indeterminate sentencing and discretionary parole did not accomplish prisoner rehabilitation

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