The Sentencing Model

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.

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

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

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

The increase in violent rapes and murders being committed by paroled prisoners in Victoria, such as those committed by Adrian Bailey in 2012, and Sean Price in 2015, have led to the tightening of parole laws, removal of suspended sentences, and introduction of new mandatory sentencing laws. However, while these laws can be an effective way of reducing crime, reducing reoffending by 17-20 percent (Helland and Tabarrok, 2007), they also are a departure from the doctrine of the separation of powers (Solonec, 2015). The purpose of this essay will be to assess how detrimental the removal of objective sentencing will be to society, through the implementation of policies such as mandatory sentencing, stricter parole laws, and the removal of

Sentencing guidelines are just that, guidelines to follow we a sentencing of an individual is taking place. “At the national level this effort led to the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, which established a set of guidelines to structure the sentencing process: The guidelines contain a Sentencing Table with 43 offense levels on the vertical axis and six categories of criminal history on the horizontal axis. Offenders in criminal history category 1 would likely have little or no criminal record, while those in category 6 would likely have extensive criminal histories” ( Carp, Manning & Stidham, 2014) The guideline is to make sure that people with no criminal background vs a convicted felon get different sentencing based on their criminal past. Also, for one to understand that if you do the crime you will do the time. These guidelines are supposed to maintain order in the sentencing within the court. This also helps the sentencing because the judge is given a guideline to follow. So no one party can say “oh the judge did not like me and threw the book at me”, no he or she just was doing their job.

While throughout history, there have always been some types of mandatory minimums, for example, “English common law required the death penalty for all felonies” (Greenblatt, Nathan). Up until the 1980s however, United States judges had a wide scope of discretion with sentencing for convictions. Judges were almost entirely free to sentence the convicted criminal however they wished. In the later 1960s and early 1970s, many legal activists disagreed with how sentencing was being conducted and pushed for sentencing reform, thus beginning in the mid-1980s, Congress began passing legislation on sentencing, giving birth to the ideas of mandatory minimums and sentencing guidelines (Bernick and Larkin). “Mandatory minimums require uniformed, automatic, binding prison terms of a particular length

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 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

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).

In 1984, President Ronald Regan signed into law the Sentencing Reform Act, that Congress enacted as part of the Comprehensive Crime Act. The Sentencing Reform act was created to help make the criminal justice system more accountable to the public with a system that contained structures or guides to aid in the use of judicial discretion. In addition, the Sentencing Reform Act created a bi-partisan group of people that were chosen for their expertise in the field of criminal justice, that were appointed by the President, were confirmed by the senate, and were directed to determine appropriate type(s) and lengths of sentences…they were to become the United States Sentencing Commission.

Federal statutory mandatory minimum penalties have existed since the early days of the nation,1 and they have continually evolved in the centuries since. As policy views have shifted over time, Congress2 and many others3 have continued to examine the role and scope of these mandatory minimum penalties in the federal criminal system.4 For more than thirty years, the United States Sentencing Commission (“the Commission”)5 has played a central role in this process, working with the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government and other interested parties to ensure that sentencing policy promotes the goals of the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 (“SRA”).6 Consistent with its statutory role,7 the Commission has continued to inform the

The author would have to say that the statistics coupled with the creation of the United States Sentencing Committee reveal that judicial discretion was at a much higher level prior to 1984, and has been on a decline as legislature has begun to regulate the discretion in which judges having in regard to sentencing in criminal cases. “Anderson, Kling, and Smith (1999) investigated 77,201 criminal cases decided between

Circles were found by the Native American cultures of the United States and Canada. These circles are used for many purposes. In the 1980s, the criminal justice system adapted and developed as the people of a first nation. Local justice officials had attempted to start building closer ties with the community and formal justice system. Going into 1991, Judge Barry introduced the “sentencing circle.” The sentencing circle means that the justice process will be shared with the community. The best-known sentencing circles were called the “Hollow Water First Nations Community Holistic Healing Circle.” The members of the community would gather around to deal with a high level of alcoholism. These circles represented a safe zone. Many had begun to

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).