Criminal sentencing in the United States
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In the United States, a judge sentences a person convicted of a crime. The length of the prison term depends upon multiple factors including the severity and type of the crime, state and/or federal sentencing guidelines, the convicted's criminal record, and the personal discretion of the judge. In addition, a few states, such as Kentucky, require the judge receive a sentencing recommendation from the trial jury. These factors may be different in each state and in the federal system as well. The vast majority of criminal convictions arise from plea bargains, in which an agreement is made between prosecutors and defense counsel for the defendant to plead guilty to a lesser charge for a lesser sentence than they would receive if found guilty at trial.
Some prisoners are given life sentences. In some states, a life sentence means life, without the possibility of parole. In other states, people with life sentences are eligible for parole. In some cases the death penalty may be applicable, however, since the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Ring v. Arizona, a recommendation of the trial jury is required to impose a sentence of death.
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[edit] Indeterminate sentencing
For people serving indeterminate sentences, the judge will sentence them to a range of years (e.g., 5-50 years). The legislature generally sets a relatively short minimum term one must spend in prison (e.g., 1/3 of the minimum sentence), after which a parole board sets the actual date of prison release. Some states establish a set of criteria the parole board must follow; in other states, the decision is discretionary.
Sometimes criticized, indeterminate sentences may lead to inequitable results, allowing too much subjectivity by individual members of parole boards to influence release decisions. This has resulted in charges of racial discrimination. On the other hand, others have argued that indeterminate sentences provide prisoners with an incentive to take advantage of programs designed for rehabilitation and allow prison authorities to release someone once rehabilitation occurs.
[edit] Determinate sentencing
A person given a determinate sentence either serves the entire sentence given by the judge, or the offender may earn "points" which may be applied toward the incarceration length (known by different names in different states, such as comp. time, day-for-day time, etc.) based on a set of criteria established by statute and regulations. The date of release is objective and is not subject to discretion.
In the mid-1970s, most states and the federal system moved away from indeterminate sentencing toward determinate sentences (also known as "truth in sentencing"). Since 2000, there has been the beginning of a movement back toward some degree of indeterminacy in sentences. Many states have some mixture of the two. For example, Illinois' prisoners since 1978 have been given determinate sentences; however, there are various programs (such as substance abuse counseling) that will result in reduction of sentences, and the Director of the Department of Corrections has discretion to reduce every sentence by 180 days for "meritorious" activities.
[edit] Trends in sentencing law
Partly in response to rising crime rates, the average length of incarceration in the United States steadily increased in the 1970s.
Many legislatures continued to reduce discretion in both the sentencing process and the determination of when the conditions of a sentence have been satisfied. Determinate sentencing, use of mandatory minimums, and guidelines-based sentencing continue to remove the human element from sentencing, such as the prerogative of the judge to consider the mitigating or extenuating circumstances of a crime to determine the appropriate length of the incarceration. As the consequence of "three strikes laws," the increase in the duration of incarceration in the last decade was most pronounced in the case of life prison sentences, which increased by 83% between 1992 and 2003 [1][2].
