The Importance Of Sentence In Maricopa County

Beyond the impact a felony conviction can have on you mentally and financially, it can also wreak havoc with your professional career. Here are some of the long-term ramifications a felony conviction can have on your career:

While a misdemeanor may be less serious than a felony, it is still serious and you can still be punished with incarceration and a monetary fine. Worse, once convicted of a misdemeanor, it goes on your record and can negatively impact your life in many ways. Not

The most serious charge, a third-degree felony, carries a potential sentence of up to three years in prison.

Apart from drug possession for personal use being treated as a misdemeanor, the law also pays attention to 5 property crimes under a worth of $950: theft, forgery, writing bad checks, receiving stolen property and shoplifting. A misdemeanor is punishable by up to one year in prison. The proposition also gives a chance to inmates currently serving time for one of those crimes to appeal for resentencing.

The Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 established a uniform set of sentencing guidelines that led to a determinate sentencing structure, where sentences for specific offenses are predetermined. Minimum mandatory sentences for certain offenses have also been put in place. In determining what an offender's sentence should be, investigators prepare a presentence investigation report. Sentencing options range from probation, intermediate sanctions (like halfway houses), incarceration in jail (for most misdemeanors), or prisons (for most

So in most cases such as theft, vandalism, and minor assault cases, if the case is finalised in court by conviction (typically by a defendant 's entering a plea of guilty to the offence or to a less serious offence), the defendant may receive a non incarceration sentence such as parole, community service or probation. From this narrowing of cases Daly et al. (2006) p 275 found from a large number experienced by victims to a trickle of defendants convicted and sanctioned has the appearance of a funnel and saves resources and space in prisons and other correctional facilities for the more serious defendants.

The United States is less the 5% of the world population but has almost 25% of the world’s prison population (Coates, 2015; Waldman, 2016). In the last 40 years, the number of American civilians imprisoned by the United States has increased 500%. (Mauer, 2011). However, this explosion in incarceration rates has not been evenly distributed throughout the American population (Waldman, 2016). While one in seventeen White men will be imprisoned in their lifetime, one in sixteen Latino men will face this fate and for Black men, the number is one in three (Mauer,2011). Neither the racial disparity in incarceration nor its scale was accidental (Coates, 2015). The mass incarceration of Black men in the United States was a direct result of the “War

It will sentence any person who traffics drugs to a minimum of two years in prison, but since Oklahoma has the strictest drug laws in the United States, because the state is very republican and it’s in the “Bible Belt”, the charges are doubled or even tripled depending on the drug and quantity. Oklahoma has a three-strike system for drug traffickers. The first two offenses are usually 10 - 25 years, but the third strike is life in prison without parole. Drug dealer and drug traffickers are in prison for life. Living the rest of their lives behind bars for a nonviolent crime. When prisons become overcrowded and are flooded with people, the state of Oklahoma sometime say that they need to revisit that law, but they usually just transfer prisoners to different prisons. After being arrested, you have a court case, but there is no negotiating. They giving you your sentencing and send you on your way, but in any other case, you have somewhat of a chance of getting away scott free. “Even in a murder case, you have an option. In this type of drug case, that's no longer the case and that's ridiculous. ” - Bob Ravitz a Oklahoma County

The historical changes in sentencing and corrections policies and practices can be characterized, in part, by the emphasis on different goals. Four major goals are usually attributed to the sentencing process: retribution, rehabilitation, deterrence, and incapacitation. Although sentences frequently address several of these goals in practice, the emphasis on which goal is the highest priority has changed dramatically in the past 30 years. (Mackenzie, 2001)

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.

The concept of mandatory sentencing is a relatively new idea in the legal field. It was first introduced in 1951 with the Boggs Act, and it made simple marijuana possession a minimum of two to ten years with a $20,000 fine. This was eventually repealed by Congress in 1970, but mandatory sentences came back with the passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. Since then, the scope and presence of mandatory sentencing has only grown, especially mandatory sentences for drug related offenses. Recently, there has been a growing concern over the use and implementation of mandatory minimum sentencing, with many believing it reduces a judge’s ability to give out a sentence that they feel accordingly fits the crime. Many advocates for mandatory

Over the past few years there has been a huge controversy to take place in the college sports world. Should athletes get paid to play in college? Is the benefit of a free education enough for college athletes? Many experts have argued both sides, in which both are valid but neither one has come up with a deciding factor on why or why not a college athlete should get paid. There is a huge amount of positive and negative outcomes that can be pulled from the situation. College Athletes should not be paid to play because it’s completely unfair to other athletic programs, it would take away the passion and intensity of the sport, and they receive enough compensation as it is.

Even though the criminal justice system has guidelines to following when sentencing criminals, there are still sentencing issues. In other words, to make the sentencing more fair and equal, several issues have been addressed. These issues are proportionality, equity, social debt and truth in sentencing. Proportionality is a standard that deals with the punishment fitting the crime. The equity principle deals with ensuring that punishment for one crime is the same as punishment for a similar crime. Social debt is the next sentencing principle. With social debt, the judge reviews past behavior or criminal records in order to impose a fair sentence. Finally, the truth in sentencing ensures that inmates are not released from prison without serving the majority of his or her sentence. In other words, credit for good behavior or educational programs would not allow the inmate to be released if he or she only served a small portion of the sentence (Schmalleger & Smykla, 2011).

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

State courts in 32 counties across 17 States sentenced 79,000 felons to probation in 1986. Within 3 years of sentencing, while still on probation, 43% of these felons were rearrested for a felony. Half of the arrests were for a violent crime (murder, rape, robbery, or aggravated assault) or a drug offense (drug trafficking or drug possession).