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Evaluate The Effectiveness Of Sentencing Essay

945 Words4 Pages

Evaluate the effectiveness of sentencing and punishment as a means of achieving justice.

The Australian criminal justice system is moderately effective in relation to sentencing and punishment as a means of achieving justice for offenders, victims and society. Sentencing and punishment is a key process utilised to enforce legislation, resolving and deterring criminal actions. Its effectiveness in upholding the interests of society is determined by the ability of enforcement to consider specific and general deterrence, retribution, rehabilitation and incapacitation. The range of penalties are an highly effective means of attaining justice as they balance the rights of parties through considering mitigating and aggravating factors of a case.

The criminal justice system is highly effective in achieving justice through utilising …show more content…

Maximum penalties that can be imposed by the judge are usually decided by parliament and outlined in the legislation that contains the offence such as the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW), which limits judicial discretion to ensure fairness as consistency in sentencing is achieved. This is demonstrated in s59 of Crimes Act 1900 (NSW) as an offender found guilty of assault occasioning actual body harm is liable to 5 years imprisonment. To further encourage fairness, a judge can impose a lesser penalty when considering aggravating and mitigating factors prescribed in s21A of Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act 1999. Mitigating factors such as the offender showing remorse, was of good character or had no prior convictions render the offence less severe and are typically introduced by the defence. This is exemplified in McCartney v R 2009 NSWCCA, involving intoxicated non-consensual sexual activity which led to

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In past times, the process of sentencing offenders generally only involved judicial determination, know as indeterminate sentencing. Within the last two decades, there has been a decline in this form of sentencing due to various concerns. Prior to the establishment of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines (1987), judges decided criminal sentences by evaluating facts of the case such as the particular offense and the offender’s past history. The judge would determine a “fair” sentence, with the only requirement that the sentence was within a statutory range. Issues started to arise such as the fact that the ranges would quite broad, such as not more than fives years, not more than twenty years, etc.

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Sentencing is used as a form of punishment and rehabilitation for crimes committed. An ongoing study is the true effectiveness of such reprimands and the philosophy of judges determining proper consequence. A majority of states have developed their own hierarchy of discipline with some communities adopting minimum sentencing statues for infractions while other states value the implementation of the death penalty and work backwards on grounds of penance (Lynch). Sentencing reform is a constant public interest that varies from state to state that driven by judges, and their constituents, on how to meet the publics need for proper treatment while balancing local and state funding for imprisonment and probation

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When an arrested person is found guilty, the judicature has a responsibility to come out with an appropriate punishment for the criminal on a case-by-case basis. There are four purposes of sanctions, which are deterrence, retribution, protection, rehabilitation and reformation. The Court of appeal was told that almost a quarter of all the sentences were too light, and the average sentence of imprisonment for rapist are said to be too lenient. The average imprisonment sentence for rape between 1999 and 2008 was just over five years; only 10 offenders out of 56 rape cases were sentenced to more than six years of imprisonment. Today, it was argued that the most appropriate imprisonment sentence for rapists is life imprisonment.

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The mandatory minimum sentencing law provides a judge with a set minimum sentences based on the charges against the defendant. The minimum sentences are usually extremely long sentences. Judges are not able to reduce the charges no matter what the defense’s argument may be. Normally in court, the defense is able to argue for a shorter sentence, but that is not the case for mandatory sentencing laws. All the power of sentencing lies with the prosecutors in these cases.

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The traditional goals of sentencing are retribution, deterrence, incapacitation and rehabilitation (Stinchcomb, 2011). A more contemporary goal of criminal sanctions is restorative and community justice (Stinchcomb, 2011). Retribution is founded on the principle that offenders should receive their ‘just desserts’. However, the penalty must be proportionate to the offence committed (Welch, 2004, p.83) Deterrence aims to reduce criminal offending.

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The penalties available to judges that they can consider when sentencing an offender will heavily depend on what purpose they wish the punishment to serve, the punishment may seek to rehabilitate, act as a deterrence or serve as retribution. The possible penalties that can be delivered to an offender will be a Non-Custodial, Semi-Custodial or Custodial sentence. The penalties that a judge can choose are highly effective as they balance the rights of the community, the victim and the offender as well as enforcing the morals and ethics of society. The Non-Custodial punishments available to judges to use in the sentencing of offenders are highly effective as they provide alternative options that promote rehabilitation.

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In the criminal justice system, the corrections component is also responsible for the rehabilitation of the convicted individual. It is their duty to attempt to make the defendant a productive member of society once again. Based on the individual’s behavior while incarcerated, the court and corrections officials may decide to place them on parole, which ensures that the individual will comply with the rules of society once they are fully released from the system. The criminal justice system is an essential role in the organizational structure of not only the United States but also in countries around the world. If there were no criminal justice system to administer punishment, the world would be unstructured, disorganized, unjustified, cruel, and not to mention a chaotic place for it citizens.

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