Similarities And Differences Of Sentencing In The American Court System

The purposes of sentencing are set out in the Crimes (Sentencing Procedures) Act 1999 (NSW) and fundamentally include deterrence, retribution, rehabilitation and incapacitation as the purposes by which a judge may impose a sentence. Deterrence intends to

Sentencing is the imposition of a criminal sanction by a sentencing authority , such as a judge. Schmallger & Smykla, 2009, pg# 71) There are seven goals of sentencing including revenge, retribution, just deserts, deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation and restoration. Revenge refers to a retaliation to some kind of assault and injury. Revenge can be a type of punishment for the criminal justice system. The jury, sometimes, basis there choices on emotions, facts and evidence. It is considered revenge in some cases because the victim's looks at it that way when they feel justice has been served. Retribution is a type of sentencing involving another form of retaliation. Retribution means "paying back" the offender for what he or she has

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).

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.

Similar to the Sentencing Reform Act, the purpose of the United States Sentencing Commission is to prevent inequity of sentencing among federal judges. It’s role is to serve as a strict guideline for Judges to adhere and limits the discretion at which a Judge may alter the length of sentence. The goal of this commission is to hamper factors such as race, sex, socioeconomic status, etc to affect the length of sentence, and aims for the guideline to stand on a neutral ground.

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.

America holds 16.3 trillion dollars in debt and the debt will continue to increase for the next twenty years. Arizona is not far behind with the accumulating debt of 42.7 billion dollars. Arizona crimes rates has increased in the last decade and the state now has over 42,000 inmates being provided food and cells at the taxpayers’ expense. To accommodate the increase of prisoners, Arizona has the increase the spending on the prison system will ignoring methods that will cut state’s expense and the increasing crime rate. In order to ensure public safety and to replenish exhausted expanses, Arizona Legislatures should adopt a new sentencing reform that limits the cost of prisons while protecting the general

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.)

Rehnquist, a judge himself at this point, believes that mandatory sentencing is the result of knee jerk reactions from legislators. Not only that, but the sentences are unusually harsh on first time offenders, a group which is usually offered some form of leniency in light of the fact that they are not habitual offenders. Rehnquist argues that a better policy would be to return to former guidelines. This is the stance this policy seeks to take. That having such inflexible rules on sentencing does not account for the all the variables that are involved in a the legal process, such as the age of offender, past criminal history, mitigating circumstances and other factors that experienced judges would know to take into account when handing down sentences.

The recording is based on research founded by Nazgol Ghandnoosh, who is a research analyst for the sentencing project. The sentencing project is a non-profit group that advocates for the criminal justice reform. She also, is an author of a report called “Race and Punishment: Racial Perceptions of Crime and Support for Punitive Policies, which is about her study of police shootings disproportionately affecting African American and how media coverage shows racial bias against African American. In addition, a 2002 survey found that people made an estimate that 40 percent of those that committed violent crimes were African American, but the real percentage was only 29 percent. According to Nazgol Ghandnoosh (2015), a research

The first goal of punishment is retribution. Retribution, also known as deserved punishment, it is when one is punished for committing a crime that harmed other people in some manner (277; ch.9). The purpose of this goal is for the criminal to understand that if you commit a crime, consequences will come with that. Depending on the crime that is committed will decide how serious the punishment is. A lot of factors are considered with retribution during the sentencing process. Factors such as the age of the defendant, their previous offense history, not only that but the victims of the crime. The judge might give the defendant a sentence that will not only punish him for the crime but also make the family feel that the proper sentence was given to the criminal.

Sentencing models are plans or strategies developed for imposing punishment for crimes committed. During the 19th century these punishments were normally probation, fines and flat sentences. When someone was given a flat sentence, he or she had to serve the entire sentence without parole or early release. However, by the end of the 19th century the new models were developed. These new models include indeterminate, determinate, advisory/voluntary guidelines, presumptive and mandatory minimum sentencing (Schmalleger & Smykla, 2011).

To me Indeterminate Sentencing is a very degraded and/or very disturbed type of sentencing. In this sentencing a legislature is the one who has say as to what the terms will be for the crime that has been committed and a judge gets the decision as to what the sentence will be for the offender. As I look at this information I feel that the judge should have a say in what the sentence will be, but not have all the power as to what it will be. A Parole Board gets to determine as to what the amount of time is that the offender will spend in prison for the crime he or she has committed. In this type of sentencing, one of the guidelines is that when determining the sentence it should meet all of the needs

Crime recidivism is the act of a person or persons repeating undesirable behaviors after they have either experienced consequences of the behaviors or have gone through a process of reform so as to deter them from similar acts. Since time immemorial man has had to deal with crime from the ancient medieval and to the present time. Law breakers have always been part of our society but through evolution, means have been devised so as to reduce levels of crime. Criminals were punished, reformed or in cases of incorrigibility, they were estranged from other members of society through banishment or death. Over the years, what is regarded has been distorted but the approach towards it has not ADDIN EN.CITE Zamble2000152(Zamble & Quinsey, 2000)1521526Zamble, E.Quinsey, V. L. The criminal recidivism process2000CambridgeCambridge Univ. Press( HYPERLINK l "_ENREF_5" o "Zamble, 2000 #152" Zamble & Quinsey, 2000). Crime is the reason why we have the law enforcement agencies all over the world and in every government system and it plays an important role to the social political and economic stability of every nation.