A recent trend in the United States Justice System, at local and state levels, is to implement the use of formulas and algorithms to determine sentencing length. In her article “Sentencing, by the Numbers”, University of Michigan law professor Sonja Starr focuses on this trend, and shows flaws that she finds in the system. In the article, she agrees with the actions of Attorney General Eric Holder in criticizing the system for the way in which it determines the risk of future crimes. Throughout, Starr presents the system as something that will, instead of solving mass incarceration, make the problem worse for impoverished persons and minorities. Starr argues that the system discriminates against those with a socioeconomic disadvantage, has
Because of these rules that law enforcement officials have created, mass incarceration rates have sky rocketed. When the Journal of Alcohol and Drug Education (1995) released their survey, the noticed that 95 percent of people described an African American person to be a typical drug user and only five percent of people described the typical drug consumer to be of another race. Nonetheless, the people in the 95 percent range showed cognitive bias as a result of only 15 percent of African Americans in 1995 were drug users. Where as, the majority of the White race consisted of drug users. Alexander responds by saying, “There is no reason to believe that the survey results would have been any different if police officers or prosecutors have been the respondents” (2011, p. 106).
Since, the majority of African-Americans live in areas of drug involvement, they are more likely to be racially profiled and investigated. This has created an uneven ethnic ratio in prisons and produced stereotypes that affect children that prevent them from becoming abiding citizens.
These are all real-life penalties that directors have faced just in the past few years. In March 2012 the former directors of Australian Capital Reserve Ltd were sentenced to terms of imprisonment to be served by way of an intensive correction order (ICO) following an ASIC investigation. The charges related to false or misleading statements in the company’s accounts and prospectus. Two directors, Samuel Pogson and Murray Lapham, were each given two years, and the third director, Steven Martin, was sentenced to one year and four months in prison.
The role of the government is to keep everyone and everything in line. The government should have a sentencing reform because with the system we have now it 's just making things worse. Some people are being placed in jail because of their color when there are real criminals that are set free when they really did do something wrong like murdering someone. The government should have a sentencing reform because the system now is just making things worse. To begin with, The government should have a sentencing reform because the system now is just making things worse.
An 18 year old first time offender caught with less than two ounces of cocaine received a 10 year sentence. A 46 year old father of three who sold some of his painkillers to someone he thought was his friend, received a 25 year sentence. In 2006 37.5% of all state and federal prisoners were black. One in 33 african american men were in jail, compared to one in 205 white men and one in 79 hispanic men.
Many factors of the crack epidemic influenced the crime drop. First, the “precipitous rise in crack cocaine in the mid-to-late 1980s in America” made violence and crime increase drastically (Baumer and Wolff, 2014, p. 21). Since crime shot up, it made statistics seem to drop even more in the 1990s, especially for homicides, as stated by Levitt (2004). The shift from young people to a “graying” society is another point at which Baumer, Wolff and Levitt can all agree could be a cause for the crime drop of the 1990s (Baumer and Wolff, 2014, p. 20).
Racial disparities in sentencing. Implications for the criminal justice system and the African American
The Sentencing Reform Act is related to the Complete and thorough Crime Control Act of 1984 were the U.S. federal law increased the consistency in the United States federal sentencing. The Sentencing Reform Act created the United States Sentencing Commission. This act allowed the independent commission into the (law-related) branch of the United States Sentencing Commission. It consists of seven voting members and one nonvoting member. For the benefit of the United States Sentencing Commission, there are rules that establish sentencing policies and practices for the Federal criminal justice system, which secures/makes sure of a meeting of the purposes of sentencing.
Statistics prove that Mandatory Minimums affect minorities disproportionately. In fact, African Americans are over 10 times more likely to enter prison for drug offenses than their Caucasian counterparts despite both racial groups using drugs in equal amounts. This shows the racial bias of the Justice System at work by using Mandatory Minimums to punish minorities with harsher sentences. Blacks and Hispanics make up 74.4 percent of the people convicted of drug charges while only making up less than 30 percent of the population. Indicative of this widespread problem, 39.4 percent of convictions in 2011 involved Mandatory Minimum Sentencing (United States Sentencing Commission 148).
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.
Like it is mentioned in the movie 13th “The so called war on drugs was a war on communities of color”. So, now black people are being arrested much more than White people even though the drug use is close to the same as Angela F. Chan points out in her article for the Huffington Post. “Even though Black people use drugs at the same rate as White people, they are incarcerated for drug crimes at 20 to 50 times the rate of White people in some states”. A law that was passed during the war on drugs was mandatory sentencing.
The Huffington Post says, “The U.S. incarcerates nearly seven times as many people, measured as a share of population, as Canada does. People of color are disproportionately represented in the American prison population and are typically punished more severely than white peers for the same crimes” (Daniel Marans). Racism against people of color has caused them to be represented poorly in society as potential criminals, especially black. MIT informs its viewers that “according to the United States census Bureau, blacks are twice as likely to be poor compared to other races, and eight times as likely to be imprisoned. Blacks are also three times more likely to be convicted of drug violations than whites.
Sentencing Sentencing occurs after a defendant has been convicted of a crime. During the sentencing process, the court issues a punishment that involves a fine, imprisonment, capital punishment, or some other penalty. In some states, juries may be entitled to determine a sentence. However, sentencing in most states and federal courts are issued by a judge. To fully understand the sentencing phase of criminal court proceedings, it is important to examine how sentencing affects the state and federal prison systems, learn the meanings of determinate and indeterminate sentencing, and understand the impact Proposition 57 has had on sentencing in California.
Sentencing disparity within the American Judicial system is a problem that exists across the nation. According to Merriam Webster’s dictionary, disparity means the markedly distinct in quality or character. Many times, disparity is used in conjunction with discrimination as if the two words mean the same, but they do not. Disparity will include a difference in treatment or outcome but is not based on an opinion, bias or prejudice.
