Sentencing Guidelines, Mandatory Minimums, and Community Corrections

In 2003, Congress considered the____ to the Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to end the Exploitation of Children Today (PROTECT) Act. This Amendment would have totally rewritten the guidelines.

Feeney Amendment

Defense lawyers, law professors, current and former Sentencing Commissioners, the President of the American Bar Association, Chief Justice Rehnquist all wrote Congress to oppose the

Feeney Amendment to the PROTECT ACT

Mandatory Minimum Issues

- Failing to provide effective, efficient deterrence or meaningful incapacitation - Requiring the continued incarceration of individuals who would not be engaged in crime - Can draw on a large supply of potential participants

The Feeney Amendment limited the changes described above to crimes involving the following:

- Pornography - Sexual abuse - Child sex - Child kidnapping and trafficking It also raised penalties for child pornography and child sex abuse. It also greatly increased prosecutorial discretion and influence by limiting judges' power to depart from the guidelines and granting prosecutors greater power over departures.

In drafting the first set of guidelines, the Commission used data that were drawn from ____, the differing elements of various crimes as distinguished in substantive criminal statutes, the U.S. Parole Commission's guidelines and statistics, and data from other sources to determine which distinctions were important in preguidelines practice. Sentencing criteria that are already in use by judges were thus codified as guidelines. The Commission essentially codified existing practice.

10,000 presentence investigations

The federal effort followed guidelines projects in several states, initially funded by the U.S. Department of Justice and led by Jack Kress and his research team during the late ____.

1970s

The first sentencing guidelines jurisdictions were county-wide, such as in Denver, Newark, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Statewide guidelines systems were next established in Utah, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Michigan, Washington, and Delaware, before the Federal Sentencing Guidelines were formally adopted in ____.

1987

Indeterminate sentencing

A sentence with a maximum (and, perhaps, a minimum) is pronounced, but the actual sentence is determined by a parole commission or a similar administrative body after the person has started serving his or her sentence.

Mandatory minimum sentences may have failed to produce effective ____. In other words, the mandatory minimum may not convince offenders to avoid committing crimes.

Deterrence

Community corrections

Develop and administer contracts for community-based correctional programs and serve as the BoP's local liaison with the federal courts, the U.S. Marshals Service, state and local corrections, and a variety of community groups - An integral component of the Bureau of Prisons' (BoP's) correctional programs - The BoP has developed agreements with state and local governments and contracts with privately operated facilities for the confinement of federally adjudicated juveniles and for the detention or secure confinement of some federal inmates.

Mandatory minimums

Eliminate judicial discretion to impose a prison term that is lower than the statutory floor, making case-specific information about the offense and the offender irrelevant, at least to the extent that these facts might call for a below-minimum sentence. - Indifferent to proportionality concerns and can pierce retributive boundaries through obligatory punishment.

Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986

Imposed increased and mandatory minimum sentences

____ is a common principle of justice which stipulates that the punishment should fit the gravity of the crime.

Proportionality between crime and punisment

Residential re-entry centers

Provide a safe, structured, and supervised environment, as well as employment counseling, job placement, financial management assistance, and other programs and services - They help inmates gradually rebuild their ties to the community and facilitate supervising ex-offenders' activities during this re-adjustment phase - Transitional drug abuse treatment (TDAT) for inmates who have completed a residential drug abuse program (RDAP) while confined in a BoP institution

Determinate sentencing

Refers to sentencing whose actual limits are determined at the time when the sentence is imposed

Mission statement of prison

To contain and restrain offenders

Sentencing guidelines are the product of the ____, which was created by the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984.

U.S. Sentencing Commission

The 2005 Supreme Court decision in the ____ found that the original sentencing guidelines violated the 6th Amendment right to trial by jury.

United States v. Booker

Though the Federal Sentencing Guidelines were styled as mandatory, the Supreme Court's 2005 decision in ____ found that the Guidelines, as originally constituted, violated the Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury, and the remedy chosen was excision of those provisions of the law establishing the Guidelines as mandatory.

United States v. Booker

In the aftermath of United States v. Booker and other Supreme Court cases, such as Blakely v. Washington (2004), the Guidelines are now considered ____. Federal judges (state judges are not affected by the Guidelines) must calculate the guidelines and consider them when determining a sentence, but they are not required to issue sentences within the guidelines. However, those sentences are still subject to appellate review. The frequency in which sentences are imposed that exceed the range stated in the Guidelines has doubled in the years since the Booker decision.

advisory only

The primary goal of the sentencing guidelines was to ____ that research had indicated was prevalent in the existing sentencing system, and the guidelines reform was specifically intended to provide for determinate sentencing.

alleviate sentencing disparities

Most sentencing is done

at the state court level

What is the primary goal of sentencing guidelines?

help alleviate sentencing disparities

Where were the first sentencing guidelines adopted in the United States?

in counties in 4 cities including Chicago

Where were the first sentencing guidelines adopted in the United States?

in several county-wide jurisdictions

What information did the Sentencing Commission use to draft its first set of guidelines?

the United States Parole Commission's statistics

How were the Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines different than the federal guidelines?

the guidelines sought to avoid increasing the prison population