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Date: April 29, 2024 Mon
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Results for sentencing (u.s.)
17 results foundAuthor: Warren, Roger K. Title: Evidence-Based Practice to Reduce Recidivism: Implications for State Judiciaries Summary: This white paper discusses the implications of principles of evidence-based practice to reduce recidivism for state judiciaries. The paper discusses how diligent application of those principles to state sentencing practices, processes, and policing can restore much-needed balance to our current sentencing systems -- sentencing systems that have swung from one extreme to the other over the last 30 years, in neither case proving very effective in addressing the problem of crime. The paper also suggests that the courts have a key leadership role to play in implementing evidence-based practices, and that evidence-based practice promises to revitalize judges' interest in sentencing just as it has rejuvenated the corrections profession. Details: Boston, MA: Crime and Justice Institute; Washington, DC: U.S. National Institute of Corrections, Community Corrections Division, 2007. 55p. Source: Internet Resource Year: 2007 Country: United States URL: Shelf Number: 118572 Keywords: CourtsJudgesRecidivismSentencing (U.S.) |
Author: Welsh, Brandon C. Title: Effects of Closed Circuit Television Surveillance on Crime Summary: Closed circuit television (CCTV) surveillance cameras serve many functions and are used in both public and private settings. The prevention of personal and property crime is among the primary objectives in public space, which is the main focus of this review. CCTV is viewed as a technique of “formal surveillance” and in this regard it is seen to enhance or take the place of security personnel. Results of this review indicate that CCTV has a modest but significant desirable effect on crime, is most effective in reducing crime in car parks, is most effective when targeted at vehicle crimes (largely a function of the successful car park schemes), and is more effective in reducing crime in the United Kingdom than in other countries. These results lend support for the continued use of CCTV to prevent crime in public space, but suggest that it be more narrowly targeted than its present use would indicate. Future CCTV schemes should employ high-quality evaluation designs with long follow-up periods. Details: Oslo: Cambell Collaboration, 2008. 76p. Source: Internet Resource: Campbell Systematic Reviews, 2008: 17: Accessed September 8, 2010 at: http://campbellcollaboration.org/lib/download/243/ Year: 2008 Country: International URL: http://campbellcollaboration.org/lib/download/243/ Shelf Number: 119767 Keywords: Closed-Circuit TelevisionElectronic SurveillanceEvidence-Based PracticesPunishmentRecidivismRisk AssessmentSentencing (U.S.)Situational Crime Prevention |
Author: McLeod, Jeffrey S. Title: State Efforts in Sentencing and Corrections Reform Summary: States continue to struggle during what is the most difficult fiscal environment since the Great Depression. Projections are that the economic recovery will be slow, forcing states to think longterm about how to do more with less. Full economic recovery may not happen until the end of the decade. With corrections among states’ largest expenditures, many are rethinking their approaches to sentencing and corrections practices as they seek to constrain spending. Between 2009 and 2010, at least 40 states made cuts to general fund expenditures for corrections. They are reducing staff salaries, benefits, or overtime, eliminating prison programs, and making food-service changes. Furthermore, states have been increasingly focused on finding ways to decrease overall prison populations. Given that the average prison bed now costs $29,000 a year, they are looking for ways to reduce the number of nonviolent and low-risk individuals going to prison, to move offenders who can be safely managed in the community out of prison sooner, and to keep ex-offenders out of prison through improved prisoner reentry practices. Ultimately, states aim to reduce prison populations enough to allow them to close prisons. States are accomplishing reductions through sentencing reform, efforts to reduce offender recidivism, and parole and probation reform. For example: South Carolina approved a sentencing reform package in 2010 that the state estimates will reduce the need to build and operate new prison beds by 1,786, saving up to $241 million by reducing incarceration of nonviolent offenders and more closely supervising released inmates to reduce recidivism; Nevada saved $38 million in operating expenditures by FY 2009 and avoided $1.2 billion in new prison construction by making key sentencing reforms, including expanding the number of credits inmates could earn for “good time” and the number of credits those on community supervision could earn for complying with conditions; and Kentucky passed legislation expected to save the state $422 million over the next decade by diverting certain drug offenders into treatment rather than prison and reserving prison space for violent and career criminals. The challenge to states is to make cuts in corrections spending while maintaining public safety. Fortunately, there now exists a significant body of research about which sentencing and corrections practices work and which do not. Research shows that implementation of evidence-based practices leads to an average decrease in crime of between 10 percent and 20 percent. Programs that are not evidence-based, on the other hand, tend to see no decrease or even a slight increase in crime. States can use that knowledge to make more informed decisions about which policies and programs to support as they seek to reduce spending on corrections. This Issue Brief provides an overview of the cost drivers behind corrections expenditures and identifies critical decision-points for states to consider as they take action to reduce costs. It also examines challenges to enacting reforms and makes recommendations for states looking to improve public safety with fewer resources. Those recommendations include: Pursue an approach to reform that involves coordination and collaboration among state executive, legislative, and judicial branches; Adopt evidence-based practices proven to reduce recidivism and eliminate programs shown to be ineffective or harmful; Target high-risk offenders and tailor sentencing, treatment, and release decisions to individual risk factors; Support mandatory supervision and treatment in the community; and Use real-time data and information for decision-making. Details: Washington, DC: NGA Center for Best Practices, 2011. 26p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed November 11, 2011 at: http://www.nga.org/files/live/sites/NGA/files/pdf/1110SENTENCINGREFORM.PDF Year: 2011 Country: United States URL: http://www.nga.org/files/live/sites/NGA/files/pdf/1110SENTENCINGREFORM.PDF Shelf Number: 123315 Keywords: Costs of Criminal JusticeEvidence-Based PracticesExpenditures in Criminal JusticeSentencing (U.S.)Sentencing Reform |
Author: Slobogin, Christopher Title: Prevention as the Primary Goal of Sentencing: The Modern Case for Indeterminate Dispositions in Criminal Cases Summary: Among modern-day legal academics determinate sentencing and limiting retributivism tend to be preferred over indeterminate sentencing, at least in part because the latter option is viewed as immoral. This Article contends to the contrary that, properly constituted, indeterminate sentencing is both a morally defensible method of preventing crime and the optimal regime for doing so. More specifically, the position defended in this Article is that, once a person is convicted of such an offense, the duration and nature of sentence should be based on a back-end decision made by experts in recidivism reduction, within very broad ranges set by the legislature. The territory covered in this Article, particularly as it addresses the debate between deontological retributivists and utilitarians, is well-trodden. But this Article seeks to provide new perspectives on the morality, legality, and practicality of indeterminate sentencing. It starts with an outline of what a properly constituted indeterminate sentencing regime would look like. It then defends this regime against numerous objections. Details: Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Law School, 2011. 47p. Source: Internet Resource: Vanderbilt University Law School, Public Law & Legal Theory Working Paper Number 11-31 Law & Economics Working Paper Number 11-43: Accessed November 16, 2011 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1959489 Year: 2011 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1959489 Shelf Number: 123368 Keywords: Indeterminate SentencesPunishmentRisk AssessmentSentencing (U.S.) |
Author: Porter, Nicole D. Title: The State of Sentencing 2011: Developments in Policy and Practice Summary: This report from the Sentencing Project highlights 55 reforms in 29 states and documents a growing trend to reform sentencing policies and scale back the use of imprisonment without compromising public safety. The report provides an overview of recent policy reforms in the areas of sentencing, probation and parole, collateral consequences, and juvenile justice. Details: Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2012. 26p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed on February 3, 2012 at http://sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/publications/sen_State_of_Sentencing_2011.pdf Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/publications/sen_State_of_Sentencing_2011.pdf Shelf Number: 123939 Keywords: Crime StatisticsPrison PopulationSentencing (U.S.)Sentencing Reform |
Author: Rehavi, M. Marit Title: Racial Disparity in Federal Criminal Charging and Its Sentencing Consequences Summary: This paper assesses the extent to which the large disparities in sentencing outcomes between black and white defendants can be explained by disparities in prosecutors' initial choice of charges, a critical stage overlooked by existing studies of sentencing disparities. To analyze charging, we pair newly constructed measures of charge severity with a newly linked dataset that traces federal cases from the arrest through sentencing. We find that black arrestees, especially black males, face significantly more severe charges conditional on arrest offense and other observed characteristics. The disparities in the use of charges that carry mandatory minimum sentences are particularly striking. These disparities appear to be major drivers of sentencing disparity. Black males face significantly longer sentences than white males do, on average and at almost every decile of the sentence-length distribution, even after conditioning on arrest offense, criminal history, district, and age. However, the addition of controls for initial charges renders most of these disparities insignificant. Indeed, the otherwise-unexplained racial disparities at the mean and at most of the deciles can be almost entirely explained by disparities in a single prosecutorial decision: whether to file a charge carrying a mandatory minimum sentence. Details: Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Law School, 2012. 59p. Source: Internet Resource: U of Michigan Law & Econ, Empirical Legal Studies Center Paper No. 12-002: Accessed March 2, 2012 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1985377 Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1985377 Shelf Number: 124348 Keywords: ProsecutionProsecutorial DiscretionProsecutorsPunishmentRacial DisparitiesSentencing (U.S.) |
Author: Eisen, Lauren-Brooke Title: Reallocating Justice Resources: A Review of 2011 State Sentencing Trends Summary: they are challenged to increase public safety while coping with smaller budgets. This report distills lessons from 14 states that passed research-driven sentencing and corrections reform in 2011 and is based on interviews with stakeholders and experts, and the experience of technical assistance staff at the Vera Institute of Justice. It is intended to serve as a guide to policy makers and others interested in pursuing evidence-based justice reform in their jurisdiction. Legislatures throughout the United States enacted sentencing and corrections policy changes in 2011 that were based on data analysis of their prison populations and the growing body of research on practices that can reduce recidivism. Although this emphasis on using evidence to inform practice is not new in criminal justice, legislators are increasingly relying on this science to guide the use of taxpayer dollars more effectively to improve public safety outcomes. In highlighting important legislative changes enacted in the past year, this report documents a new approach to reform in which bipartisan, multidisciplinary policy groups are using analysis of state population and sentencing data, harnessing the political will emerging from the budget crisis, relying on decades of criminal justice research, and reaching out to key constituencies. The result is legislation that aims to make more targeted use of incarceration and to reinvest the cost savings into community programs geared toward reducing recidivism and victimization. Details: New York: Center on Sentencing and Corrections, Vera Institute of Justice, 2012. 28p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 23, 2012 at http://www.vera.org/download?file=3489/reallocating-justice-resources.pdf Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://www.vera.org/download?file=3489/reallocating-justice-resources.pdf Shelf Number: 124723 Keywords: Criminal Justice PolicyLegislationSentencing (U.S.) |
Author: 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: Starr, Sonja B. Title: Racial Disparity in the Criminal Justice Process: Prosecutors, Judges, and the Effects of United States v. Booker Summary: Current empirical estimates of racial and other unwarranted disparities in sentencing suffer from two pervasive flaws. The first is a focus on the sentencing stage in isolation. Studies control for the “presumptive sentence” or closely related measures that are themselves the product of discretionary charging, plea-bargaining, and fact-finding processes. Any disparities in these earlier processes are built into the control variable, which leads to misleading sentencing-disparity estimates. The second problem is specific to studies of sentencing reforms: they use loose methods of causal inference that do not disentangle the effects of reform from surrounding events and trends. This Article explains these problems and presents an analysis that corrects them and reaches very different results from the existing literature. We address the first problem by using a dataset that traces cases from arrest to sentencing and by examining disparities across all post-arrest stages. We find that most of the otherwise-unexplained racial disparities in sentencing can be explained by prosecutors’ choices to bring mandatory minimum charges. We address the problem of disentangling trends using a rigorous method called regression discontinuity design. We apply it to assess the effects of the loosening of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines in United States v. Booker. Contrary to prominent recent studies, we find that Booker did not increase disparity, and may have reduced it. Details: Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Law School, 2012. 59p. Source: Internet Resource: U of Michigan Law & Econ Research Paper No. 12-021: Accessed November 9, 2012 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2170148 Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2170148 Shelf Number: 126895 Keywords: Mandatory MinimumsRacial DisparitiesSentencing (U.S.)United States v. Booker |
Author: Vera Institute of Justice, Center on Sentencing and Corrections Title: Performance Incentive Funding: Aligning Fiscal and Operational Responsibility to Produce More Safety at Less Cost Summary: America’s tough-on-crime sentencing policies are often cited as the primary reason the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Yet there is another contributing factor that is often overlooked: a structural flaw in the way most states fund their criminal justice systems that discourages local decision makers from supervising offenders in the community and makes it easier to send them to prison. It is the state corrections agency that bears the cost of incarcerating people in prison. However, both the decision to send an offender to prison and the cost of keeping an offender in the community almost always rest with a different state agency or a local jurisdiction. This is true for either a new conviction or a revocation from probation or parole. In the eyes of local decision makers and in cases involving low-level offenders, sending someone to prison is all too often the preferred option because it saves the actual expense of supervision and avoids the political cost should an offender commit a serious crime while in the community. Because of ongoing state budget deficits and decades of prison population growth, state policymakers have recently begun to focus attention on this misalignment of fiscal and operational responsibility by devising solutions that make system actors more accountable and collaborative. Since 2003, eight states have enacted legislation creating performance incentive funding (PIF) programs that aim to align the interests of the state corrections agency and local decision makers. PIF programs are premised on the idea that if the supervision agency or locality sends fewer low-level offenders to prison—thereby causing the state to incur fewer costs—some portion of the state savings should be shared with the agency or locality. With PIF, agencies or localities receive a financial reward for delivering fewer prison commitments through reduced recidivism and revocations that, in turn, must be reinvested into evidence-based programs in the community. In September 2011, the Vera Institute of Justice, the Pew Center on the States, and Metropolis Strategies brought together more than 50 practitioners from the states that have enacted or were considering PIF legislation. In addition to outlining how PIF programs can lead to better offender outcomes while reducing overall corrections costs, this report discusses seven key challenges and tasks, identified by summit participants, that a state must address when designing and implementing a PIF program: (1) choosing an administrative structure, (2) selecting a funding mechanism, (3) deciding whether to provide seed funding, (4) selecting outcome measures, (5) determining baseline measures, (6) estimating savings, and (7) engaging stakeholders. The report suggests that including multiple measures to evaluate performance and determine eligibility for incentive funding, rather than focusing on just the single outcome of reduced prison commitments, will ensure that public safety is protected while positive outcomes are still achieved. This report also highlights the importance of incorporating evidence-based practices into the incentive funding structure and providing agencies and localities with the resources and support they need to pursue the program’s goals. A successful PIF program can significantly curb prison population growth and costs while increasing public safety: in the first year of its PIF program, California experienced a 23-percent drop in prison commitments of felony probationers, and $88 million of the savings was distributed to county probation agencies. Most important, PIF can transform public safety by contributing to a reduction in recidivism, crime, and revocation rates. Details: New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2012. 24p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed January 23, 2013 at: http://www.vera.org/files/performance-incentive-funding-report.pdf Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://www.vera.org/files/performance-incentive-funding-report.pdf Shelf Number: 127369 Keywords: Costs of Criminal JusticeCriminal Justice ExpendituresPrisonsSentencing (U.S.) |
Author: Porter, Nicole D. Title: The State of Sentencing 2012: Developments in Policy and Practice Summary: Today, 6.98 million men and women are under correctional supervision. A total of 4.8 million individuals are monitored in the community on probation and parole and 2.2 million are incarcerated in prisons or jail. The nation continues to maintain the highest rate of incarceration in the world at 716 people in prison per 100,000 population. The scale of incarceration varies substantially by state, resulting from a mix of crime rates and legislative and administrative policies. Lawmakers continue to face challenges in funding state correctional systems. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, several states are likely to be reducing services, including education and health care, during the 2013 legislative session due to reduced state revenues, uncertainty at the federal level and the impact of potential cuts in federal funding. In recent years, reducing prison populations with the goal of controlling correctional costs has been a salient reason for reform in states like Kansas, New York, and New Jersey. Overall, prison populations declined by 28,582 in twenty-six states during 2011, or 1.5%. State lawmakers in at least 24 states adopted 41 criminal justice policies that in 2012 may contribute to downscaling prison populations and eliminating barriers to reentry while promoting effective approaches to public safety. This report provides an overview of recent policy reforms in the areas of sentencing, probation and parole, collateral consequences, and juvenile justice. Highlights include: • Relaxed mandatory minimums – Seven states – Alabama, California, Missouri, Massachusetts, Kansas, Louisiana, and Pennsylvania – revised mandatory penalties for certain offenses including crack cocaine possession and drug offense enhancements; • Death penalty – Connecticut abolished the death penalty, becoming the 17th to eliminate death as a criminal sanction; • Sentence modifications – Two states – Louisiana and Oklahoma – authorized or expanded mechanisms to modify sentences post-conviction. These policies allow prosecutors and judges to reduce the prison sentences of individuals who meet eligibility requirements; • Parole and probation revocation reforms – Seven states – Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Missouri, and Pennsylvania -- expanded the use of earned time for eligible prisoners and limited the use of incarceration for probation and parole violations; and • Juvenile life without parole – Three states -- California, Louisiana, and Pennsylvania – authorized sentencing relief for certain individuals sentenced to juvenile life without parole. Changes in criminal justice policy were realized for various reasons, including an interest in managing prison capacity. Lawmakers have demonstrated interest in enacting reforms that recognize that the nation’s scale of incarceration has produced diminishing returns for public safety. Consequently, legislators and other stakeholders have prioritized implementing policies that provide a more balanced approach to public safety. The evolving framework is rooted in reducing returns to prison for technical violations, expanding alternatives to prison for persons convicted of low level offenses and authorizing earned release for prisoners who complete certain rehabilitation programs. Details: Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2013. 28p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 4, 2013 at: http://sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/sen_State%20of%20Sentencing%202012.pdf Year: 2013 Country: United States URL: http://sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/sen_State%20of%20Sentencing%202012.pdf Shelf Number: 127475 Keywords: Correctional ReformInmatesParolePrisonersProbationSentencing (U.S.) |
Author: Saxena, Preeta Title: Estimating the Effect of Sexism on Perceptions of Property, White-Collar, and Violent Crimes Summary: Prior research on the role of gender in perceptions of crime and sentencing has focused primarily on judicial outcomes (i.e., empirical differences in male/female sentencing), and some theorists have proposed the chivalry thesis to explain differential outcomes for male and female offenders. Although a prominent theory, the empirical validity of the chivalry thesis has been under scrutiny for decades. In light of this, I argue that gender differences in sentencing can be understood through examination of sexist attitudes and beliefs, and how these sexist attitudes and beliefs interact with characteristics of the offense and the offender to influence perceptions of crime and appropriate sentencing. To test this assertion, 671 respondents were assessed according to their sexist attitudes along both the benevolent and hostile dimensions of sexism, as well as to their perceptions of a series of violent, white collar, and property crime vignettes. Sexism scores were hypothesized not only to share significant associations with respondent’s perceptions of crime, but also to interact with the type of crime committed and the gender of the offender to influence respondent’s perceptions of the crimes in the vignettes. Results based on ordered logistic regressions suggest that both benevolent and hostile sexist attitudes interact with the type of crime committed and the gender of the offender to influence perceptions of crime seriousness, and sentence severity. Furthermore, when controlling for type of crime and sexist attitudes, female offenders tended to be given harsher ratings than men for violent and property crimes. When controlling for crime type and the gender of the offender, respondents with higher benevolent sexism scores perceived violent and property crimes to be more serious and thought sentencing should be more severe than either non-sexists, or respondents with higher hostile sexism scores. Finally, hostile sexists gave the harshest ratings for white-collar crime vignettes. Implications for existing theories and future studies are discussed. Details: Riverside, CA: University of California, Riverside, 2012. 117p. Source: Internet Resource: Dissertation: Accessed March 30, 2013 at: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/278674nj Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/278674nj Shelf Number: 128177 Keywords: Female OffendersGender DisparitiesSentencing (U.S.)SexismSexist Attitudes |
Author: United States Sentencing Commission Title: Report on the Continuing Impact of United States v. Booker on Federal Sentencing Summary: This report assesses the continuing impact on the federal sentencing system of the Supreme Court's 2005 opinion in United States v. Booker, which rendered the sentencing guidelines advisory. Part A of the report discusses the history of the federal sentencing guidelines and the post-Booker sentencing and appellate processes. It also reports the results of statistical analyses of federal sentencing data spanning a broad time frame, from October 1995 through September 2011, and provides recommendations for strengthening the federal sentencing guidelines system. Parts B through F contain more detailed descriptions of appellate court decisions, additional charts, tables, and graphs depicting sentencing data, and a description of other stakeholders' proposals for sentencing reform. Appendices to Parts B through F include additional data and tables, summaries of relevant public hearings, and a summary of the Commission's 2010 survey of district judges. Details: Washington, DC: United States Sentencing Commission, 2012. 115p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed April 12, 2013 at: http://www.ussc.gov/Legislative_and_Public_Affairs/Congressional_Testimony_and_Reports/Booker_Reports/2012_Booker/index.cfm Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://www.ussc.gov/Legislative_and_Public_Affairs/Congressional_Testimony_and_Reports/Booker_Reports/2012_Booker/index.cfm Shelf Number: 128346 Keywords: Federal Sentencing GuidelinesSentencing (U.S.)United States v. Booker |
Author: Yalincak, Orhun Hakan Title: Critical Analysis of Acquitted Conduct Sentencing in the U.S.: 'Kafka-Esque', 'Repugnant', 'Uniquely Malevolent' and 'Pernicious'? Summary: The use of acquitted at sentencing is a highly contested practice in sentencing theory and policy. In federal court and many state courts across the United States, once a defendant is convicted, judges are routinely permitted, in fact, required to increase a defendant’s sentence based on relevant conduct, of which he was acquitted at trial, or conduct for which he was never charged. This essay highlights the issues that arise from the use of acquitted conduct sentencing under the now advisory U.S. Sentencing Guidelines. The use of acquitted conduct under the relevant conduct provisions of the Guidelines has resulted in substantially longer prison sentences with a disparate impact on racial and ethnic minorities. Acquitted conduct sentencing treats the offence admitted by a defendant, or proven to a judge or jury’s satisfaction beyond a reasonable doubt as simply a starting point in calculating a defendant’s sentence; the modified real offense approach, which incorporates relevant conduct and mandates consideration of acquitted conduct, determines the end sentence. This essay concludes that use of acquitted conduct should be prohibited both on constitutional and normative grounds. While it is outside the scope of this essay to offer a comprehensive solution or alternative to the use of acquitted conduct at sentencing, the key observation is that, since the common thread linking the constitutional and normative issues arise from the fragmented nature of U.S. sentencing policy, the solution must start with re-conceptualizing the theories underlying sentencing in the U.S. Details: Unpublished paper: 2013. 38p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed August 6, 2013 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2293449 Year: 2013 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2293449 Shelf Number: 129563 Keywords: JuriesPunishmentSentencing (U.S.)Sentencing Guidelines |
Author: Valadez, Mercedes Title: "We have got enough criminals in the United States without importing any": An Examination of the Influence of Citizenship Status, Legal Status, and National Origin among Latino Subgroups in Federal Sentencing Outcomes Summary: The study of non-U.S. citizens in criminal justice system outcomes has often been neglected in the sentencing literature. When citizenship is considered, there are generally no distinctions made within this group. The research fails to consider differences according to legal status, race/ethnicity, nationality, and other distinctive markers that might play a role in sentencing outcomes. Using federal sentencing data collected by the United States Sentencing Commission for fiscal year 2006 through fiscal year 2008, this study examines the effect of offender citizenship status, legal status, and national origin on the likelihood of imprisonment and length of imprisonment for offenders convicted of drug offenses. The current study considers differences among foreign-born and Latino immigrant subgroups (e.g., Colombian, Cuban, Dominican, and Mexican nationals). The key findings in this dissertation include: (1) non-U.S. citizens have greater odds of imprisonment than U.S. citizens. However, non-U.S. citizen offenders receive significantly shorter prison terms relative to U.S. citizen offenders; (2) undocumented immigrants are more likely to be incarcerated compared to similarly situated authorized immigrants and U.S. citizens. However, legal status does not have an effect on sentence length; and (3) with respect to national origin, Mexican nationals are significantly more likely than Colombians to be incarcerated and are given significantly longer prison sentences than Dominican nationals. The implications of these findings and future research are addressed in the concluding chapter. Details: Phoenix, AZ: Arizona State University, 2013. 144p. Source: Internet Resource: Dissertation: Accessed January 16, 2015 at: http://repository.asu.edu/attachments/110555/content/Valadez_asu_0010E_12976.pdf Year: 2013 Country: United States URL: http://repository.asu.edu/attachments/110555/content/Valadez_asu_0010E_12976.pdf Shelf Number: 134412 Keywords: Alien CriminalsLatinosPunishmentSentencing (U.S.) |
Author: Lee, Evan Title: Regulating Crimmigration Summary: In the last decade, federal prison populations and deportations have both soared to record numbers. The principal cause of these sharp increases has been the leveraging of prior criminal convictions - mostly state convictions - into federal sentencing enhancements and deportations. These increases are controversial on political and policy grounds. Indeed, the political controversy has overshadowed the fact that the Nation's Article III and immigration courts have struggled with an exquisitely difficult set of technical problems in determining which state criminal convictions should qualify for federal sentencing enhancements and/or deportation. The crux of the problem is that the underlying crime can be viewed in a fact-sensitive manner - which usually benefits the government - or in an abstract, "categorical" manner - which usually benefits the individual. In two recent decisions, Descamps v. United States and Moncrieffe v. Holder, the U.S. Supreme Court has squarely sided with a categorical approach. Yet the implementation of a categorical approach faces three huge challenges: first, it cuts against the widely shared intuition that just punishment should turn on the facts of the case in question; second, it presupposes that federal courts will always be able to ascertain the essential elements of state offenses; and third, a categorical approach resists application to a significant number of existing federal statutes. This Article sketches out a coherent framework for administering a categorical approach across both federal sentencing and immigration, in the process reconciling seemingly inconsistent Supreme Court decisions and suggesting how several circuit splits should be resolved. Details: San Francisco: University of California Hastings College of the Law, 2015. 72p. Source: Internet Resource: UC Hastings Research Paper No. 128: Accessed February 12, 2015 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2559485 Year: 2015 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2559485 Shelf Number: 134604 Keywords: DeportationImmigrantsImmigrationPunishmentSentencing (U.S.)Sentencing Enhancements |
Author: Schuman, Jacob Title: Sentencing Rules and Standards: How We Decide Criminal Punishment Summary: Over the course of the past 300 years, American sentencing policy has alternated between "determinate" and "indeterminate" systems of deciding punishment. Debates over sentence determinacy have so far focused on three main questions: Who should decide punishment? What makes punishment fair? And why should we punish wrongdoers at all? In this Article, I ask a new, fourth, question: How should we decide punishment? I show that determinate sentencing uses rules to determine sentences, while indeterminate sentencing relies on standards. Applying this insight to federal sentencing practice, I demonstrate that district court judges "depart" or "vary" from the United States Sentencing Guidelines in order to correct the substantive and formal errors that result from rule-based decision-making, instead sentencing in such cases based on the 3553(a) standard. I argue that judges should be more willing to take departures and variances in cases involving particularly large or particularly numerous sentence adjustments, which exacerbate the impact of rule-based errors. Details: Unpublished paper, 2015. 54p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed march 11, 2015 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2545671 Year: 2015 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2545671 Shelf Number: 134898 Keywords: Criminal LawCriminal ProcedureSentencing (U.S.)Sentencing Guidelines |