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Advantage and disadvantage of Determinate and indeterminate sentencing
Advantage and disadvantage of Determinate and indeterminate sentencing
Advantage and disadvantage of Determinate and indeterminate sentencing
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If the offender is found guilty for the charge they will receive the harsher sentence, it is all about being honest within the federal courts, on determining the offenders
Before watching the documentary, Life on Parole, I wasn’t aware that parole could be revoked for relatively minor offenses or for arguably not important offenses. I believed that it would take more major offenses to have parole revoked. However, the documentary showcased that there is a broad spectrum of offenses that can get a parolee sent back to prison t the discretion of their parole officer. As stated by one of the parolees, “Some people think being on parole is you’re free. You’re not.”
Being released from prison, there is a point when a parole board can take freedom away. Many individuals control prisoners’ release, parole boards decide if they are at low enough risk to reenter society. Some prisoners must complete a program for release, but rehabilitation programs are so far behind, causing prisoners to never be eligible for release. Of the inmates that qualify for release, only 12% have been considered. Looking at the OLRs; only two prisoners in the last 17 years released on parole.
When a judge is considering sentencing to convict an offender specific deterrence should be more valuable than general deterrence but both are needed in the sentencing process. For the offender not to reoffend specific deterrence need to be embedded to determine the certainty of the crime. So the offender will not commit the same crime twice. Overall doing the sentencing process the judge have the right to use this offender specific deterrence to promote general deterrence to the public. This will allow other to fear the consequences and possibly punishment if they commit this specific crime.
As we know, there are many ways criminals can be punished. When sentencing happens, the defendant is usually sentenced to the following punishments, listed from minor to extreme: Fines Community service Diversion programs Probation GPS monitoring Jail Prison Death penalty (Rio Salado, 2022). Most of these punishments can be listed under either the utilitarian or retributive theory of punishment. The utilitarian theory seeks to punish offenders to 'deter' future wrongdoings.
Mandatory minimum sentencing policies were set into action with good intentions, but the law did not turn out as expected. The mandatory minimum sentencing acts were created to provide equality that every offender of the particular crime will serve the same punishment. This ensures that there will be no bias. They were expected to lower crime rates, because people will possibly think twice before committing a crime if the mandatory minimum sentence is five year or if they have been convicted before, they will not want to be incarcerated again for double the time. Judges cannot change the sentence.
Deterrence is future oriented to prevent crimes. Deterrence has two types general and specific. General is an individual punishment to dissuade others from committing crimes and specific is an individual being punished for additional
In the U.S. criminal justice system, there are two basic sentencing models that the courts use to apply their judgments. These are determinate sentencing and indeterminate sentencing. Determinate sentencing can be referred as a set sentence imposed to an offender this model is based on the famous phrase “Do the crime and will do the time”; however, this model has a unique quality and that is that a parole board can’t overturn the length of the sentence that was imposed. On the other hand indeterminate sentencing can be describe as the length of a sentences that has not being defined yet like the term “25 to life” on this term you can see that the sentencing was not set to an specific time frame, that means that the offenders release date is
This type of sentencing is meant to provide a balance between punishment and
But reality tells of a different story. Eight out of ten ex-offender will return to prison within three years of being released, either on a minor violation or on new criminal charges. An ex-offender past limits their ability
According to the book Corrections The Essentials by Mary K. Stohr and Anthony Walsh, a sentencing disparity occurs when there is a wide variation in sentences received by different offender that may be legitimate or discriminatory. A disparity is legitimate if it is based on crime seriousness and/ or prior record. If it is not then it is considered discriminatory. Sentencing guidelines can help attempts to address these disparities by determining how long a person should go to jail for each crime they committed.
The theory is that if someone has already been convicted of multiple violent felonies, they are unlikely to change their behavior and may continue to be a danger to society if released from prison. By imposing longer sentences on these individuals, the hope is that they will be kept off the streets and unable to commit further crimes. However, some argue that persistent violent felony offender status is too harsh and does not take into account individual circumstances. For example, someone may have committed multiple violent felonies early in life and then turned their life around, but under this law, they could still face a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years to life for any future violent felony convictions. Additionally, critics argue that this enhancement disproportionately affects people of color, who are more likely to be convicted of violent crimes and receive longer sentences than white individuals.
Even the innocent get sentenced major years for crimes that weren't even committed by them. Sentence reforming needs to take action.
Incarceration also punishes offenders by depriving them of their liberty once the court of law has convicted. Moreover, incarceration deters criminals from committing further crimes
Motivation is a key factor; many criminals are motivated by desires, rage and desperation. It is very possible that criminals are not thinking rationally when committing a crime. In other words, the severity of a punishment is largely irrelevant when criminals are not thinking clearly at the time, the very fact that they committed the crime in the first place is already evident that they never considered the consequences. Therefore, it is untrue that harsher punishments are more
