NCJ Number
180120
Journal
Law & Policy Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Dated: July 1998 Pages: 247-279
Editor(s)
Keith Hawkins,
Murray Levine
Date Published
1998
Length
33 pages
Annotation
Sentencing guidelines legislation is currently under consideration by the Massachusetts legislature; this paper discusses the process used by the Massachusetts Sentencing Commission in formulating the sentencing guidelines legislation, with attention to two salient issues: intermediate sanctions and mandatory sentencing as well as their relationship to the guidelines legislation and the prospects for passage.
Abstract
The Massachusetts truth-in-sentencing law introduced certain changes that affect sentencing and time served, established the Sentencing Commission, and specified certain parameters for the Commission to follow in developing sentencing guidelines. Participants in the guidelines formulation process decided at the outset to adopt a set of guiding principles to serve as a framework for guidelines development, to use focus groups to elicit input from victim representatives and criminal justice constituencies in the early and middle stages of the process, and to convene public hearings later in the process. The unanimous adoption of the Commission's final report contributed significantly to the credibility of the sentencing guidelines. After discussing the Commission's conceptual model for sentencing guidelines, the analysis in this article shifts to the integration of intermediate sanctions into the sentencing guidelines as well as the integration of certain offenses with mandatory minimum terms (i.e., drug offenses) into the sentencing guidelines. The paper concludes with a discussion of the status of the guidelines legislation at the time of the paper's writing, including the criticisms that were raised in the legislative process, the responses to the criticism, and the prospects for passage. 1 table, 7 notes, and 17 references