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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
Time: 3:48 am
Time: 3:48 am
Results for mandatory minimum sentences (u.s.)
2 results foundAuthor: de la Vega, Connie Title: Cruel and Unusual - U.S. Sentencing Practices in a Global Context Summary: In the United States, people who are found in possession of drugs, a non-violent offense, can be sentenced to die behind bars. A person can get a 25 year to life sentence for stealing golf clubs if he has committed two previous offenses, or a life sentence if he has stolen small sums of money three times. A person can get a series of consecutive sentences for each of the component parts of his conduct, such as counting each child pornography file as a separate offense, resulting in a 150 year sentence, much longer than if that person had actually molested a child. A person who sells a handful of drugs can face a mandatory sentence of 15 years. In many states, a child can be prosecuted at any age, tried as an adult, and sentenced to life without parole. U.S. law allows the same defendant to face prosecution twice, by both the federal and state government. And even if legislators decide to enact laws that lighten sentences, the new law does not automatically apply to prisoners already serving their sentences. All of these sentencing practices—life without the possibility of parole, “three strikes” laws, consecutive sentences, mandatory minimums, juvenile justice laws, dual sovereignty, and non-retroactive application of ameliorative law—are used frequently in the United States in ways they are not in the rest of the world. These American practices, focused on goals of deterrence and retribution, neglect the possibility of rehabilitation. Meanwhile, international human rights law places social rehabilitation and reformation as the aims of any penitentiary system. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a human rights treaty that the United States has signed and ratified, says, “The penitentiary system shall comprise treatment of prisoners the essential aim of which shall be their reformation and social rehabilitation.” By ratifying this document, the United States has agreed that it will uphold this basic human right. Despite this obligation, the United States is an outlier among countries in its sentencing practices. The U.S. is among the minority of countries (20%) known to researchers as having life without parole (LWOP) sentences. The vast majority of countries that do allow for LWOP sentences have high restrictions on when they can be issued, such as only for murder or for two or more convictions of life sentence-eligible crimes. The number of prisoners serving LWOP sentences is more than 41,000 in the United States. In contrast, there are 59 serving such sentences in Australia, 41 in England, and 37 in the Netherlands. The size of the U.S.’s LWOP population dwarfs other countries’ on a per capita basis as well; it is 51 times Australia’s, 173 times England’s, and 59 times the Netherlands’. Recidivism statutes in the United States allow a person with multiple convictions to be given lengthy sentences. While many countries take past criminal history into account for sentencing, very few of them apply a blanket punishment that is as harsh as those used in the United States, where 3,700 people who have never committed a violent crime are serving 25 years to life in California alone. A systemic problem in the United States is that courts have not considered consecutive sentencing, or punishing one wrong as if it were two or more, as a major problem. As a result, they have not offered comprehensive remedies or established clear lines on when sentences should be consecutive or concurrent. Only 21% of countries around the world, including the United States, allow uncapped consecutive sentences for multiple crimes arising out of the same act. Mandatory minimum sentences in the United States have also increased sentence lengths, particularly for drug crimes. Under federal law, a judge must sentence a person convicted of possession of a kilogram of heroin to at least 10 years. The same offender in Britain would receive a maximum sentence of 6 months. There is no minimum age of criminal liability in many U.S. jurisdictions (in 32 out of 50 states) and in the 18 states that do have them, the age is less than 10. International legal standards however suggest the minimum age of criminal liability to be 12. The United States is only one of 16% of countries in the world that allow for juveniles to be tried and sentenced as adults. The United States is the only country in the world that in practice sentences juveniles to life without parole. Its maximum sentence for juveniles, life without parole, is much more severe than those found in the majority of the world (65%), which either limit sentences to 20 years or less or reduce the degree of the crime for juveniles. The United States, Somalia, and South Sudan are the only three countries in the world that are not state parties to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The United States, Canada, and Micronesia are the only countries known to researchers that allow successive prosecution of the same defendant by both the federal and state government for the same crime. International law and practice indicate that when a change of law will benefit an offender it should apply retroactively. The majority of countries in the world (67%) provide for this type of retroactive application of ameliorative law. In contrast, the U.S. federal government and state legislatures frequently refuse to apply the lighter penalty to those already sentenced. The sentencing practices in the United States persist at the same time that the United States has the largest prison population in the world and the highest incarceration rate in the world. Never before have so many people been locked up for so long and for so little as in the United States. Details: San Francisco, CA: Center for Law and Global Justice, School of Law, University of San Francisco, 2012. 88p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed June 4, 2012 at http://www.usfca.edu/law/docs/criminalsentencing/ Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://www.usfca.edu/law/docs/criminalsentencing/ Shelf Number: 125320 Keywords: Mandatory Minimum Sentences (U.S.)Punishment (U.S.)Sentencing (U.S.) |
Author: FAMM (Families Against Mandatory Minimums) Title: Turning Off the Spigot. How Sentencing Safety Valves Can Help States Protect Public Safety and Save Money Summary: During the 1980s and 1990s, lawmakers with good intentions voted to enact many mandatory minimum sentences in an effort to reduce crime. Lawmakers across the country were led to believe that mandatory minimum prison sentences were necessary to remove drug dealers from the streets and stop the flow of illegal drugs into our communities. This national movement toward harsh punishment has had the opposite effect of its intentions as many states have seen an unprecedented increase in their inmate populations without a proportionate benefit to public safety. Mandatory minimums are a one-size-fits-all approach to sentencing that have taken away judges’ discretion and force the sentencing of offenders without consideration of the individual circumstances of a case. Mandatory sentences have been extended from applying to “big-time dealers” to many smaller fish who deal drugs to support their own addiction. At least two-thirds of our inmates have drug addiction issues. Mandatory minimums have been a driving force behind Pennsylvania’s inmate population increase from 8,000 in 1980 to 51,000 in 2011. FAMM’s work on fair sentencing issues is changing attitudes here in Pennsylvania and across the country as many states are now moving toward fairer sentencing practices. FAMM has provided valuable advice and insight to the Pennsylvania Senate Judiciary Committee and to me personally as we work toward prison reform. This report examines several states’ “safety valve” statutes — legislation that allows judges to bypass a mandatory sentence under certain circumstances. I support legislation that would provide a safety valve for cases where the mandatory minimum sentence would be unjust. A federal law providing for a safety valve was enacted in 1994. Since that time nearly 80,000 federal drug offenders facing mandatory minimum sentences have received the benefit of the safety valve, saving the federal government an estimated $25,000 per prisoner, per year for each year shaved off of the sentence. About one-third of states have enacted some type of safety valve statute, with considerable cost savings and without a reduction in public safety. The following report should serve as a guide to lawmakers and policy advisors across the country who are seeking to reduce their states’ inmate populations and save precious resources currently spent on incarceration. FAMM has demonstrated that we can be tough on crime as well as smart on crime. Details: Washington, DC: FAMM, 2013. 23p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed April 16, 2013 at: http://www.famm.org/Repository/Files/Turning%20Off%20the%20Spigot%20web%20final.pdf Year: 2013 Country: United States URL: http://www.famm.org/Repository/Files/Turning%20Off%20the%20Spigot%20web%20final.pdf Shelf Number: 128382 Keywords: Costs of CorrectionsDrug OffendersMandatory Minimum Sentences (U.S.)PunishmentSentencing |