Sentencing Policy Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Government response to crime is usually reactive and cyclical. When crime rates increase, responses become more punitive in nature. When crime rates stabilize or decrease, responses become more lenient. Public opinion also influences how government responds. When victimization rates climb, pressure on lawmakers to “do something” prompts swift action. In liberal democracies, the failure of lawmakers to act quickly to assuage public fear often results in electoral defeat. In some jurisdictions in the United States, citizens have taken matters into their own hands by passing more punitive sentencing laws through the ballot initiative process.

Sentences Promoting Rehabilitation

In the early twentieth century, advances in psychology, sociology, and the medical sciences prompted social scientists to theorize that perhaps with the right course of treatment, criminal tendencies could be effectively “cured.” Accordingly, sentencing policy was revised to emphasize prevention and treatment rather than punishment. Corporal punishment was banned, capital punishment became increasingly rare, and prisons were refashioned as treatment centers rather than places of punishment. Moreover, sentencing laws were altered to expand judicial discretion over the sentencing process. To facilitate effective treatment, judges would base offenders’ sentences on their rehabilitation potential rather than the severity of their crimes. Lawmakers also created a system of probation and parole that facilitated individualized treatment plans.

Although many penal systems still emphasize rehabilitation as a sentencing goal, evaluative research in the United States revealed flaws with rehabilitation-only sentencing. First, in many jurisdictions, treatment plans were found to be ineffective at reducing recidivism rates of participants. U.S. government reports revealed that half of the nation’s offenders committed new crimes shortly after completing their sentences. Second, academic studies found that judicial discretion led to inequities in sentencing. Often, judges would base their sentences on offenders’ demographic characteristics, such as race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status instead of the seriousness of the behavior of offenders. This led many lawmakers to conclude that rehabilitation-oriented policies produced disparate and unjust sentences.

Sentences Promoting Deservedness, Deterrence, And Incapacitation

As a result of these findings, nearly all of the states in the United States have reformed their penal systems to reflect more traditional penal philosophies of deservedness, deterrence, and incapacitation. Lawmakers replaced indeterminate sentencing laws that gave judges the ability to craft individual sentences with determinate provisions grounded in the principle of deservedness or just deserts. Accordingly, criminal sentences are now gradated according to the seriousness of the offense. Yet, not all offenders receive prison sentences. Probation allows first-time nonviolent offenders to remain in the community while under the supervision of the court, and alternative sentences, such as mandatory community service and victim restitution, give judges additional options with nonviolent offenders who pose no discernible public safety threat. For more serious transgressions, however, offenders are typically sentenced to fixed periods of imprisonment that increase in proportion to the severity of their crimes.

Although just-deserts reforms eliminated some of the sentencing inequalities found in rehabilitation-oriented systems, continuing increases in crime and victimization rates have led lawmakers to adopt utilitarian-based sentences that promote deterrence and incapacitation. Deterrence is based on the premise that people are rational actors and, thus, will behave in a way that maximizes their benefits and minimizes their costs. When the rewards of wrongdoing are high and the cost of crime is low, people are more likely to offend. By increasing the severity of sentences, the cost of crime is thought to exceed the overall value of wrongdoing; consequently, would-be offenders are deterred from breaking the law. Furthermore, lawmakers use deterrence theory to justify specific sentence increases for those who commit crimes with a firearm, those who target children, and those who habitually recidivate.

Additionally, lawmakers have used lengthy prison sentences to incapacitate high-risk offenders. Academic research showing that a small percentage of high-rate offenders commit more than half of all crimes allowed lawmakers to justify policies targeting “career criminals.” “Three-strike” laws became popular in the United States in the mid-1990s, and although these policies often are critiqued as being too severe, the U.S. Supreme Court has consistently upheld their legality. Recently, other nations have explored similar policies to deal with persistent, high-rate offenders.

In this new penal scheme, judicial discretion has been reduced dramatically; in some cases, it has been eliminated altogether. Mandatory sentences, which are popular with policy makers and citizens alike, restrict the ability of judges to moderate criminal sentences for certain types of crimes. Many mandatory sentencing laws target sex offenders, subjecting them to lengthy periods of imprisonment. Even with longer sentences, recidivism rates remain high, and recent policy innovations, such as satellite monitoring, registration requirements, and residential restrictions, have sought to extend governmental oversight after parole periods have been successfully completed.

Bibliography:

Beck, Allen J., and Bernard E. Shipley. Recidivism of Prisoners Released in 1983.
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, 1989.
Blumstein, Alfred, Jacqueline Cohen, Susan E. Martin, and Michael H.Tonry, eds. Research on Sentencing:The Search for Reform, vols. 1–2.Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1983.
Dershowitz, Alan M. Fair and Certain Punishment: Twentieth-Century Fund Task Force on Criminal Sentencing. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976.
Frankel, Marvin E. Criminal Sentences: Law without Order. New York: Hill and Wang, 1973.
Martinson, Robert. “What Works? Questions and Answers about Prison Reform.” The Public Interest 35 (Spring 1974): 22–54.
Tonry, Michael H. Sentencing Matters. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

This example Sentencing Policy Essay is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need a custom essay or research paper on this topic please use our writing services. EssayEmpire.com offers reliable custom essay writing services that can help you to receive high grades and impress your professors with the quality of each essay or research paper you hand in.