Some of the reasons that policymakers and voters are favoring intermediate sanctions for nonviolent, low-risk offenders are because it releases the heavy economic burden on taxpayers (Schmalleger & Smykla 2015). Building more and more prisons to house inmates cost money, and that money comes from taxpayers. When more and more offenders are sentenced to prison, the prisons become overcrowded very fast. When overcrowding occurs, disorder is not far behind it. Having to hire more staff and train them correctly also cost the taxpayers money.
The financial penalties for not doing the right thing create a strong incentive that the bail bond agent can use to make sure the offender follows the rules. Since the bond lowers recidivism, it keeps the people safe because the offender won’t do criminal activities, otherwise the offender returns to custody. O'Brien: 1) The Reform of Mandatory Minimums can be better than the Conditional Early Release
Alexander identifies mandatory minimums and three-strikes laws as major contributors to the mass incarceration epidemic. Mandatory minimums are laws that attach mandatory prison sentences to certain kinds of offenses. These laws are controversial among judges, who tend to feel that they reduce judicial discretion and prevent them from handing down proportionate sentences. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court has often ruled in favor of mandatory minimum sentencing laws. Often ruling that while these sentences were harsh, they were not unconstitutional.
2 In recent years, mandatory sentencing laws have been introduced in NSW. Alcohol related violence mandatory sentence was introduced by the NSW government On 21 January 2014. This was introduced because of the amount of one-punch hits while intoxicated. Teens such as Thomas Kelly and Daniel Christie have been killed because intoxicated people for no reason hit them.
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.
Untie the Judges Hands Imagine you are a fifty-one year old man and you have not eaten in two days, and you resort to theft. Stealing a fifty-cent package of doughnuts from the corner store. You are at your home when suddenly officers burst in and arrest you.
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.
Introduction Crime, its punishment, and the legislation that decides the way in which they interact has long been a public policy concern that reaches everyone within a given society. It is the function of the judicial system to distribute punishment equitably and following the law. The four traditional goals of punishment, as defined by Connecticut General Assembly (2001), are: “deterrence, incapacitation, retribution, and rehabilitation.” However, how legislature achieves and balances these goals has changed due to the implementation of responses to changing societal influences. Mandatory minimum sentences exemplify this shift.
The existence of mandatory minimums are a major issue in the United States today. Since the implementation of Mandatory minimums, the prison population has increased 800%. This massive rise in prisoner population has come with devastating economic and human costs. The death of Len Bias, the moral panic that ensued, and corporate looking to make a profit off of it, have all culminated in the implementation of mandatory minimums. Len Bias was an American college basketball player who had just been recruited to play in the NBA, he died in 1986 due to a heart attack believed to have been caused by cocaine use.
The initial thinking behind the creation of minimum mandatory sentences was created by congress to aim in the capture and imprisonment of high level drug traffickers, and deter others from entering into drug trafficking or using illegal substances, which would create a safer society. However, the nation prison has been expanded with low level street drug dealers, and the accessibility to illegal drugs is more obtainable then before the enactment of the mandatory sentencing act. In fact, the number of drug offenders in federal prisons has increased 21 times since 1980. Contrary to what congress has believed in the past about the dangers of crack cocaine compared to that in powder form has been proven to be untrue, but little has been done to reduce the number of prisons affected by that belief.
Why is it that the amount of time that offenders serve is shorter than what they were sentenced to? Why are some prisoners entitled to parole while others must stay in prison to serve their sentence? Well thats because prison crowding, good-time reductions, and earned-time incentives lead to early release of prisoners. Many States have responded by enacting restrictions on early release. In result “truth-in-sentencing” laws were created, so that it could make it a requirement for offenders to serve a good portion of their sentence imposed by the court before becoming eligible for parole or release.
The minimum mandatory sentencing guidelines do not provide the opportunity for plea bargaining or allow for the separation of the offense into different degrees of the crime. Age of the defendant, the first time being in trouble with the law, entering into rehabilitation or other surrounding circumstances cannot be part of the sentencing factors. The result is an increasing prison population creating higher costs without solving the underlying
The reason I believe that eliminating mandatory minimum sentences is something that needs to be done is because it is necessary in some cases to let people who are incarcerated or soon to be incarcerated to get out of jail before they were sentenced to get out. Sometimes mandatory sentences target people unfairly like for example minorities or younger individuals. According to Chief Editor African Americans pertaining to drug use suffer more than white Americans do and it is causing unjust between the two races. There was also a case of a woman named Tina who set a building on fire by accident, killing two young boys when she was a young girl and was reprimanded for it and was tried as an adult and sentenced to life, even though she suffered
Laws like these put restraints on a judge's power and sentence. Although there are laws that limit a judges power on the sentence they impose, judges should consider the past circumstances of an individual when sentencing because this consideration of the past helps everyone. It widens a judge's narrow view of a felon during or awaiting trial. According to Marc Mauer, the Author of a “race to incarcerate”, not everyone has the kind of funds to get a good attorney or to confidently and securely say that mental health counseling or drug treatment is a viable option.
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
