In particular, mandatory sentences which impose a sentence of imprisonment go against the presumption that imprisonment should be a measure of last resort and only where no other sentencing option is sufficient. It therefore follows that the sole purpose of a prescribed minimum mandatory sentencing regime is to require sentencers to impose heavier sentences than would be proper according to the justice of the case.
As opposed to providing a deterrent, the impact of mandatory minimum sentences and terms of incarceration for youth means a rise criminogenic behaviour learned within the prison system. Mandatory sentencing regimes are not effective as a deterrent and instead contribute to higher rates of reoffending. In particular, [they] fail to deter persons with mental impairment, alcohol or drug dependency or persons who are economically or socially disadvantaged.
The excessive nature of punishment in the U. Moreover, unduly long prison terms are counterproductive for public safety and contribute to the dynamic of diminishing returns as the prison system has expanded.
Incarceration in the United States rose at an unprecedented rate for nearly four decades beginning in National Research Council. Such policies were adopted by the federal government and every state to varying degrees. As a result of these changes, the combined prison and jail population of about , in has mushroomed to 2. Correctional Populations in the United States This growth has far outpaced the overall increase in the national population and is accompanied by a similar pace of growth in community supervision, with approximately 4.
As articulated by the policymakers who enacted these measures, the goal of mass incarceration was to improve public safety outcomes. Punishment and Inequality in America. There is a growing body of scholarship examining the relationship between incarceration and crime. While it is beyond the scope of this essay to review that work in full, we should note two primary findings of this research. First, incarceration has an impact on crime, but the scale of that effect is much more modest than many policymakers or members of the public believe.
At best, some studies conclude that the rise of incarceration may have produced about a quarter of the decline in crime that has occurred since the early s. The Limited Importance of Prison Expansion. Other studies have found this effect to be as low as five percent. Even if one concludes that one quarter of the decline is the most defensible finding, that means that three quarters of the decline in crime was not due to increased incarceration.
Possible factors offered to explain this substantial portion of the crime decline include strategic policing, decline of the crack cocaine drug markets, community-based anti-crime initiatives, and enhanced economic opportunity. The second primary research finding on the effects of incarceration is that there are diminishing returns to public safety brought about by the prison expansion.
Two key factors underlying this conclusion are that expanded prison space encourages more substantial incarceration of less serious offenders and that lengthy prison terms keep individuals behind bars long after they present a significant risk to public safety.
A popular framework to explain the growing movement for criminal justice reform is that it was occasioned by conservatives recognizing the high fiscal cost of incarceration, particularly following the financial crisis of Further, some observers trace the origins of the new reform movement to substance abuse treatment expansion policies adopted by Texas in , leading to growing interest in justice reform in red states in particular.
While these developments have enhanced support for reform, the origins of the reform movement are both broader and earlier in time. Four developments are key in understanding this history. First, crime rates have been declining since the early s 12 Gramlich, John. Five Facts About Crime in the U.
Pew Research Center. This is not to suggest that upticks in murder rates in some cities in recent years are not of concern, but overall, this two-decade trend has been significant. A broad range of the public now recognizes that prioritizing punishment over treatment fails to recognize the supply and demand dynamics of the drug trade.
Despite enormous resources being devoted to both domestic law enforcement and international interdiction, any impact on supply or pricing of illegal drugs has been minimal at best.
Conversely, by failing to invest adequately in prevention and treatment programming, demand for drugs remains at disturbingly high levels. Third, the reentry movement, which originated during the Clinton Administration in the late s, came about at a moment when there was increasing receptivity to evidence-based and compassionate approaches to working with people convicted of crimes.
The understanding that ninety-five percent of the people sentenced to prison would be coming home someday provided an opening for liberals and conservatives to come together to support the shared goals of skills development needed to improve prospects for reentry. Fourth, a burgeoning grassroots movement focused on racial injustice has heightened the focus on the need for broad criminal justice reform to a broader constituency. Further, ignited by the spate of police killings of black men, social justice leaders such as former NAACP president Ben Jealous have framed mass incarceration as the civil rights issue of the twenty-first century.
The Other Black President. American Prospect. These and other developments combined to create interest and opportunity among both policymakers and advocacy organizations to press for changes in law enforcement and sentencing policy. Various campaigns have shared the twin goals of making law enforcement agencies more accountable to the communities they serve and addressing the need for significant reductions in the scale of incarceration. Over the past two decades a handful of states have made significant inroads into reducing their prison populations.
Seven states—New Jersey, Alaska, New York, Vermont, Connecticut, California, and Michigan—have achieved reductions of more than twenty percent since their peak population years. The Sentencing Project, Washington, D. Notably, these reductions have come about without adverse effects on public safety.
Several factors have been influential in this regard. Policy shifts by the U. Sentencing Commission. About 31, people qualified for sentence reductions averaging two years and have been released from prison on a rolling basis as their recalculated prison term makes them eligible for release. A prior reduction in sentence length for crack cocaine offenses contributed to the population decline as well, as has the declining number of drug prosecutions since FY Attorney General Eric Holder Jr.
The impact of this shift has not yet been fully realized since most of these convictions have still resulted in a prison term, albeit shorter terms than in the past. While the political and practical shift toward reducing prison populations to a more rational level is encouraging, the overall scale of that change is still quite modest.
As previously noted, a small number of states have achieved substantial reductions, but in most states the picture is one of stabilizing the growth of prison populations or only modest reductions.
Additionally, eight states continue to increase their prison populations. Yet an assessment of the rate of population decline of recent years shows that it would take seventy-five years to cut the prison population in half. Such projections suggest that current strategies for decarceration are far too limited to meet such an ambitious goal. While analyzing the sources of prison growth or decline is a complicated undertaking, estimating the projected size of a prison system is relatively straightforward.
The number of people in prison is simply a function of how many people are sent to prison and how long they are kept there. Reducing prison admissions as a means of reducing prison populations has a lengthy history. In some respects, this approach goes back to the nineteenth century with the beginnings of a probation system. Augustus would work with the individual to provide guidance and structure in his life with a compassionate approach that functioned as an alternative to keeping him behind bars.
In more recent times, the spread of alternative sentencing gained significant traction in the s. Due in part to a perceived need to offset escalating rates of incarceration and the desire for a system that could aid individuals in the community while avoiding the negative consequences of prison, a broad alternatives-to-incarceration movement has emerged and thrived.
This initiative encompasses various approaches, including community service, restitution to victims, halfway houses, restorative justice, and drug and other specialty courts.
The success of these varied approaches is difficult to gauge overall and is largely dependent on how one defines success. In the federal courts the alternatives movement has far less history and traction than at the state level.
Since , this has been primarily due to the adoption of the federal sentencing Guidelines, which are premised on the idea that a term of imprisonment is the default option in the vast majority of cases. There has been some movement at the U. Sentencing Commission to address this gap. A major symposium on the potential for expanded use of alternatives was held by the Commission in , 28 U.
Sentencing Commission Symposium on Alternatives to Incarceration. More recently, in the Commission identified expanding the use of alternatives as a priority issue. In contrast to the alternatives movement, policymaker attention to the length of prison terms has lagged considerably. This is problematic for efforts to scale back mass incarceration because longer prison terms have been a major contributor to the expanded prison population.
Before exploring these issues in greater detail, we should note that there have been some efforts to address the length of prison terms in both the federal and state systems. At the federal level, the most impactful shift has been the decisions by the U. Regrettably, the adoption of mandatory minimums has not led to a fairer system. In fact, it's had the opposite effect. Interestingly, federal judges have come to dislike mandatory minimums , especially in drug cases. Mandatory minimums often apply to nonviolent drug offenders , forcing judges to harshly punish those who pose the least physical danger to communities.
While mandatory minimums have been in place in some states since the s, their use grew after the Sentencing Reform Act, which added significant mandatory minimums for many federal crimes and abolished federal parole. States followed, and soon mandatory minimums became a standard response to drug epidemics and crime spikes. What started as a well-intentioned attempt to impose uniformity became too restrictive, creating new disparities and injustices in the process.
In sentencing an offender, the court must consider whether a particular case meets the threshold for imposing a term of incarceration, taking into account and balancing the purposes and principles of sentencing. Mandatory sentencing laws require that judicial officers deliver a minimum or fixed penalty for the purposes of this paper, a term of imprisonment upon conviction of an offender.
Mandatory sentencing laws may apply to certain offences, or to a particular type of offender—for example, repeat offenders. Both jurisdictions were identified by stakeholders as currently having mandatory or presumptive sentencing provisions that have a significant impact on their Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations.
These provisions are discussed below. These were identified by stakeholders as having a disproportionate impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations. This means that an offender would receive, at a minimum, seven and a half years, or 10 and a half years imprisonment.
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