Sentencing Guilty Verdict

In the United States there are four main goals when it comes to punishment which are retribution, deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation (DeJong, 2016, p. 288). The main goals for these punishments are to maintain order over society and to prevent recidivism (DeJong, 2016, p. 288). This ties into the Ecology perspective. By maintaining order over society and preventing recidivism, it ties into all of the issues regarding the Ecology perspective which requires for each issue to address the individual, family, community and society. Maintaining order over society and preventing recidivism strives toward making a safer environment for the individual, family, community and society. There is no universal agreement for making the severity of punishment just or fair (DeJong, 2016, p. 288). When it comes to retribution the person who is getting punished deserves the punishment (DeJong, 2016, p. 289). Retribution refers to when an individual commits a certain crime then that person must receive a punishment proportionate to that crime or suffering that they may have caused towards the victim (DeJong, 2016, p. 289). Regarding deterrence there are two types, general deterrence and specific deterrence (DeJong, 2016, p. 289). General deterrence focuses on the society in general and wants to scare everyone away from committing crimes (DeJong, 2016, p. 289). Specific deterrence focuses on criminals that have already been convicted and wants to prevent them from

Bentham, J. (1789). Punishment and deterrence. In A. von Hirsch & A. Ashworth (Eds., 1998), Principled sentencing: readings on theory and policy (2nd ed.). 53-57. Oxford: Hart Publishing.

Discuss factors that affect sentencing decisions, including the purposes of punishment and the role of the victim

Secondly, they should be addressed the needs of offenders and the deficits in their lives that contributed to their offending. And thirdly, sentences should not be severe, intrusive, or damaging to an offender’s later decarceration to live a righteous life than is minimally necessary to achieve valid purposes of the sentence he or she receives (Tonry 508). An addition to these are proportionality, which means that sentences should correspond in severity to the seriousness of the crimes which they are inflicted. Also, regularity, which signifies that sentences should be guided by official standards to make the process clear, procedures fair, and allow judges to be more accountable (Tonry 508). Moreover, the American Criminal Code must be taken into consideration. Two features must be altered if the sentencing is to become fair, effective, and just. Firstly, the harsh sentencing laws must be revoked, and secondly the limits, that matches the offense seriousness, must be put on the lawful sentences (Tonry 514). Moreover, Tonry mentioned about future changes that, “If adopted, they would greatly reduce the number of people in prison in future years, but their adoption would not significantly reduce the scale of American imprisonment in 2015 or in 2020. Doing that will require enactment of new laws authorizing reconsideration of sentences now being served (Tonry 523).

A very simple, yet popular and long-standing goal of sentencing is retribution. Criminals are punished according to their crime because they deserve punishment. The idea that a certain crime equals a certain punishment is very simple and could

A sentence is a decree of a punishment assigned to a defendant who was found guilty by a court, or fixed by law for a particular offence.

Mandatory sentencing is a set penalty approved by parliament for committing a criminal offence. This sentence can involve any type of consequence, it normally refers to prison sentencing. All Australian states and territories have mandatory sentences, most of them introduced life imprisonment for murder after the death penalty’s abolition but, over time, most jurisdictions adjusted the minimum penalty. (Roche, 1999)

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.

Congress sought to reform the sentencing system by designing sentencing Guideline rules that were uniformly to control disparity. In order to reform the sentencing system, Congress created the Sentencing Commission in charge of designing a new sentencing system using multiple sources to evaluate the means to control the source of disparity (Bowman, 1996; Fifteen Years of Guidelines, 2004). Once the Guidelines were created and implemented, studies conducted by the Commission reports that it has increased drastically especially for drug offenses due to different adaptations to the Guidelines and the different types of offenses prosecuted in different regions (Fifteen Years of Guidelines, 2004). The variation in sentence lengths is analyzed based on the data evidence shows 73 percent of differences in federal sentence length causing unwarranted disparity (Fifteen Years of Guidelines, 2004). The cause of unwarranted disparity is influenced by policies promulgated by Congress that were supposedly designed to amend the effects of uneven charging and plea-bargaining decisions. With prosecutors in control of determining an offenders sentencing, they can impose several enhancement to depart from the Guidelines to provide leniency. However, such enhancement resulted in sentences disproportional to the appropriate serious of the offense that would be otherwise applied to the case (Fifteen Years of Guidelines, 2004). The Commission reports there is little empirical research in exploring why prosecutors use its discretion to apply enhanced penalties and depart from the Guidelines (Tonry, 1996; Fifteen Years of Guidelines,

Miscarriage of justice is reflected in various states across the nation, where there are far too many occurrences where individuals have been convicted of crimes and subjected to unfair mandatory sentencing. “Mandatory minimum sentencing laws require binding prison terms of a particular length for people convicted of certain federal and state crimes” (Famm, n.d.). “Mandatory minimum sentences imposed by statute are intended to achieve consistency in sentencing at the expense of individual consideration of the contextual sentencing factors” (Harvard Law Review, 2011). “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 offense” (Famm, n.d) “Mandatory sentencing laws cause federal and state prison populations to soar, leading to overcrowding, exorbitant costs to taxpayers, and diversion of funds from law enforcement” (Famm, n.d.)

The functionality of the criminal justice system can potentially be flawed by the lack of a clear, concise sentencing guidelines. Studies have shown that the circumstances of the offender, their families, as well as the community can be affected by any biased views in sentencing guidelines (Doerner, 2012).

First, a sentencing structure should be rational. The sentence should be proportional to the severity of the crime as measured by the harm to the victim and to the offender’s prior record. One of the things I would do to ensure rationality to a sentencing structure is eliminate mandatory minimums. Mandatory minimum sentences don’t serve to eliminate sentencing disparities because they do not eliminate sentencing discretion - they merely shift that discretion from judges to prosecutors.

“Like the ancient tension between fixed and indeterminate sentencing, there’s an ancient debate about judicial discretion in sentencing.” Proponents argue that mandatory minimum sentencing can place a significant hardship on correctional budgets while at the same time, threatening an increase of an inmate’s claim that their rights pursuant to the Eighth Amendment protection of cruel and unusual punishment have been violated. Opponents of fixed sentencing tend to posit that mandatory (determinate) sentencing can act as a deterrent, which can equate to a reduction in overall crime rates.

Nonetheless, just as law should be tempered with equity, so should rigid sentencing rules leave room for adjustment in certain cases where a legislatively fixed sentence would be manifestly unjust. No statute can account for every variable in every case, and the attempt to do so with mandatory minimums has given rise to punishments in some small-scale drug possession cases that are completely out of whack with the purpose of the federal sentencing laws.

"Any court dealing with an offender in respect of his offense must have regard to the following purposes of sentencing" retribution, denunciation, incapacitation, deterrence, rehabilitation and reparation which will all be discussed in this essay.