Mandatory Minimum Sentencing Essay

Society is dissatisfied due to the evolving violent crime rate since the 80s’, therefore, courts have been providing and urging longer sentences and harsher punishments for criminals to keep them from committing more crimes. Ultimately the majority agrees that before applying the harshest penalty of life without parole, the judge must at the very least consider all the circumstances that have led up to the juvenile committing the crime no matter how horrific in nature. “The Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment ‘guarantees individuals the

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.

Roper v. Simmons is considered a landmark case and is one of a handful that shows a new direction in granting some relief from what has been established as harsh “adult” punishments for juveniles (Elrod & Ryder, 2014). In fact, many studies are showing that the differences between adults and juveniles are quite significant (Elrod & Ryder, 2014). The courts are realizing that these differences must be taking into account when dealing with juveniles in the criminal justice system (Elrod & Ryder, 2014). However, that being said, change does not occur overnight, and for the unforeseeable future, juveniles will still continue to be waived into adult courts (Elrod & Ryder, 2014).

Sentencing Guidelines are a set of rules used by judges in the criminal justice system in the United States. The sentencing guidelines were first established in Massachusetts in 1994. When the sentencing guidelines were established, its main goal was to "promote truth in sentencing by developing a set of guidelines that was appropriate in consideration to the crime the individual had committed." (Massachusetts Sentencing Guidelines, February 1998, the Honorable Robert A. Mulligan, Chairman). There are ten steps that are included in the sentencing guidelines.

Annotated Bibliography Bower, Alicia. " Constitutionally Crowded: Brown v. Plata and How the Supreme Court Pushed Back to Keep Prison Reform Litigation Alive." Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 45.2 (2012): 555-67. Academic Search Complete. Web.

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.

In determinate sentencing the judge can make adjustments to the final day of incarceration, however, the inmate can leave no sooner that the mentioned final day. During indeterminate sentencing, a final day of incarceration is not known exactly and adjustments can be made for different modes of incarceration. The judge and jury are able to change these sentences depending on the severity of the crime and the history of the inmate. I believe that this is why judicial discretion has such a great effect on these types of sentencing. The sentences can be adjusted appropriately in order to be sure that the offender does not end up being given too much or too little time for the crime that they committed.

However, some argue that this enhancement is more fair than persistent violent felony offender status because it only applies to individuals who have committed two violent felonies, rather than those who have been convicted of two or more. In addition to these sentencing enhancements, New York State also has a number of violent felony offenses that carry severe penalties. These offenses include murder, manslaughter, kidnapping, rape, and assault with a deadly weapon, among others. Those convicted of these offenses face long prison terms and may also be subject to the persistent violent felony offender or second violent felony offender enhancements if they have previous violent felony convictions. While these sentencing enhancements and violent felony offenses may seem harsh, proponents argue that they are necessary to keep violent offenders off the streets and protect society.

Previous policies which reduced the amount of time an offender served on a sentence, such as good behavior, earned-time and parole board release, are restricted or eliminated under truth-in-sentencing laws. The definition of truth in sentencing varies among the States, as do the percent of sentence required to be served and the crimes covered by the laws. Most States have targeted violent offenders under truth in sentencing law. A few States, such as Florida, Mississippi, and Ohio, require all offenders to serve a substantial amount of their sentence before they can be eligible for

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.

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

Deterrence and the Death Penalty: The Views of the Experts. The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (1973-), 87(1), 1. doi:10.2307/1143970 This article was written by Michael L. Radelet and Ronald L. Akers. They both consulted experts on criminology and criminal behaviour to evaluate the effectiveness of the Death Penalty.

For example, individuals focused more on demographics of the victim and offender (e.g., age, gender, non-criminal behavior of the victim) than on legally relevant factors (e.g., multiple victims, act committed with other felonies) when deciding whether to sentence a defendant to death. When the considerations of age, gender and emotional factors were explained this often led to participants applying stricter standards to the circumstances that warranted an offense as death penalty eligible than the standards deemed by many states’ laws. Although each scenario was based on an actual death penalty case, several participants who supported the death penalty only supported it when the victim was a child or when there were multiple victims. Participants’ unwillingness to sentence offenders to death in the depicted scenarios may show that their standards are more severe than legal

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.

There is a worldwide trend in the use of penal imprisonment for serious offenses as capital punishment has been renounced by an increasing number of countries. Harsh punishments include capital punishment, life imprisonment and long-term incarceration. These forms of punishments are usually used against serious crimes that are seen as unethical, such as murder, assault and robbery. Many people believe that harsher punishments are more effective as they deter would-be criminals and ensure justice is served. Opposition towards harsh punishments have argued that harsher punishments does not necessarily increase effectiveness because they do not have a deterrent effect, do not decrease recidivism rates and do not provide rehabilitation.