NCJ Number
75784
Editor(s)
H Gross,
A vonHirsh
Date Published
1981
Length
401 pages
Annotation
This collection of articles identifies and discusses such sentencing issues as personalized sentencing, deterrence and incapacitation, just deserts, discretionary control, decisionmaker choice, and sentencing severity.
Abstract
The book's first section discusses characteristics of punishment and sentencing and presents a criminal justice administration model which provides a basis for analyzing laws, procedures, and institutional activities. The second section focuses on sentencing from the standpoint of rehabilitative goals in which the sentence is an individually prescribed approach to reforming individuals and preventing future criminal activity. The rehabilitative movement is traced from principles and model codes developed in the 19th century and midtwentieth century, and criticism of rehabilitative goals are discussed. The next section considers the morality of using sentences for deterrence effects, presents a deterrence model, and discusses economic deterrence effects. It also reviews the value of incapacitating dangerous criminals by sentencing them to removal from society or to community supervision and describes considerations involved in measuring the impacts on crime rates of deterrence and incapacitation. The book's fourth section focuses on the concept just deserts. The structure for a desert-based theory of sentencing is presented, and means of ensuring equality of sentencing under a desert sentencing approach are described. Factors which should be considered in determining whether a just desert sentence or a more lenient one should be rendered are identified. Sentencing guidelines, policy implications for these guidelines, the concept of presumptive sentencing, and a critique of the presumptive sentencing concept are included in the book's fifth section. The sixth section examines the issue of whether the judiciary or a sentencing commission should make sentencing decisions and considers the question of decisionmaking in the parole setting. The seventh section discusses punishment severity and whether severe punishments should be invoked regularly or rarely. Tabular data and footnotes are provided. Suggested readings are included after some articles.