NCJ Number
138588
Journal
U.C. Davis Law Review Volume: 25 Issue: 3 Dated: (Spring 1992) Pages: 563-569
Date Published
1992
Length
7 pages
Annotation
This article reviews the history of the latest sentencing reform and implications for the future of criminal sentencing reform.
Abstract
In the span of a few years during the late 1970's and early 1980's, many States and the Federal Government dramatically switched from more than half a century of indeterminate sentencing to it philosophical and functional opposite, i.e., determinate or fixed sentencing. This change was due primarily to professional disenchantment with the medical model of sentencing (keep an offender under correctional jurisdiction until treatment ensures no recidivism) and to concern with widespread sentencing disparity and arbitrariness that apparently undermined the link between sentencing harshness and offense severity. Sentencing reform has focused on predictability and uniformity in sentencing while providing for consideration of factors in each case that should influence sentencing severity. Sentencing guidelines have become a vehicle for limiting and guiding judicial sentencing discretion so as to achieve uniformity and proportionality in sentencing. Current influences on sentencing tend to be economic; i.e, what kinds of sentences can the State afford to implement. Economics are dictating that sentences involve imprisonment only for the most dangerous offenders and that priority be given to intermediate sentences that are less costly than imprisonment, but which ensure public safety. 8 footnotes