UNIT 2: Criminal Law and Juvenile Justice

Chapter 15
Criminal Justice Process: Sentencing and Corrections

STREET LAW

Sentencing & corrections are the final phases

of the criminal justice process
Once found guilty, a defendant will be
sentenced by a judge or a jury (depending on
individual state law)
The sentence is the most critical decision in
the process, as it can determine a defendants
fate for years or even life

There are several sentencing options, ranging

from a suspended sentence & probation to
imprisonment, or even death
Criminal sentences serve a number of
purposes, including retribution, deterrence,
rehabilitation, & incapacitation
Once the defendant has been sentenced, he
or she enters the corrections system

Several treatment or punishment options are available:

Community corrections
Halfway houses
Jails, &
Prisons

The convicts entry back into society after his or her

sentence has been served can be a difficult adjustment
To help with this transition, the U.S. Dept. of Justice has
developed a program called reentry that provides
support & mentoring relationships between convicts &
counselors

Sentencing

Most criminal statutes set out basic guidelines

for sentencing, but judges generally have
considerable say in determining the
appropriate sentence for a defendant
Judges may have several options for
sentencing

These options include:

suspending the sentenceor allowing the

defendant to serve the sentence at a later time;

releasing the defendant to the supervision of a
probation officer;
& sentencing the defendant to serve his or her time
at home

A judge may also issue a fine, require the

defendant to pay back the victim for harm
caused, or allow the defendant to work in the
community during the day but return to prison
at night or on weekends
The most severe sentences a judge may
impose are imprisonment & death

In response to public concerns about judges

who were soft on crime, some states have
moved toward determinate sentencing
This approach does not allow the broad
discretion formerly allowed to judges in
sentencing criminal defendants
Under the determinate sentencing approach,
criminals are sentenced on the basis of an
offender score

Rather than tailoring the sentence to the

individual circumstances of the offender &
considering the potential for rehabilitation, the
judge sentences offenders within a limited range
of punishment based on the seriousness of their
present offense & their prior criminal record
Judges can only go outside the range of
punishment if specific mitigating or aggravating
circumstances are found

Generally, the sentence becomes eligible for

appeal when it goes outside the range of
punishment
Some judges, lawyers, & others are critical of
sentencing guidelines & determinate
sentencing
They say it takes away from judges the
discretion that they need to make fair
sentencing decisions

States have also passed:

Mandatory prison terms for crimes like narcotics & firearm

offenses & murder

Sentence enhancements for specific situations, i.e., when
guns are involved in the crime
Habitual offender laws that give mandatory minimum
sentences to habitual offenders
Three Strikes Laws
Laws creating a civil commitment process for those sexual
predators, in which the convicted are confined in a locked
treatment facility once their criminal sentence has been
served

In addition, federal & state laws have

lengthened confinement times for violent,
sexual, & drug crimes
These statutes have all contributed to prison
overcrowding

Home Confinement:
The advantages to a sentence of home confinement

are that the offender does not have to spend time

behind bars & can maintain his or her job or school
responsibilities
This approach may be less expensive than prison
The disadvantages to such a sentence are that the
offender cannot leave his or her home except for
essential purposes (work, school, doctors
appointments) & that he or she must wear a
monitoring device

Purposes of Punishment
& Parole

There are four general reasons given for

punishing convicted defendants:
Retribution
Deterrence
Rehabilitation
& Incapacitation

Retribution is the idea that punishment should involve

some form of payback ("an eye for an eye")
Deterrence is the concept that punishment will
discourage others from engaging in future criminal
activities
Rehabilitation is the idea that time in prison will allow
the prisoner to change his or her ways & learn how to
function as a productive member of society
Incapacitation removes the individual from society in
order to make the community safe from the threat he or
she posed

Parole

Parole is the release of a convicted person

from prison before his or her entire sentence
has been served
Parole is a privilege granted to those convicts
who seem to have reformed & appear ready to
rejoin society

Capital Punishment
Technically, capital punishment means imposition
of the death penalty or life imprisonment
However, we tend to think of capital punishment
only in terms of the death penalty
The U.S. Supreme Court typically hears several
cases each term of the death penalty
Courts must look at aggravating & mitigating
circumstances before imposing the death penalty

The capital punishment cases mentioned in the text are:

Furman v. Georgia, & Lockett v. Ohio
In Buchanan v. Angelone, the Supreme Court ruled that
the trial judges failure to instruct the jury on the concept
of mitigation in general, as well as about specific
mitigating factors, did not violate the defendants rights
The Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of
capital punishment under certain circumstances
The Court has also considered the issue of whether
someone who did not actually pull the trigger of the gun
can receive the death penalty

In Enmund v. Florida the defendant had driven

the getaway car after his cohorts robbed &
shot to death an elderly couple
Under state law, this was felony murder
punishable by life imprisonment or death
The Court reasoned that Enmunds lack of
intent & his physical absence during the
killings would make the death sentence cruel
& unusual punishment

Congress passed the Anti-Terrorism & Effective

Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) in 1996
Under this law, if a state is certified as providing
adequate representation for death row inmates
in post-conviction relief proceedings, a faster
appeals process is established
As of 1999, no state had qualified as providing
adequate representation for death row inmates
There has been significant debate over this law

Critics, including the American Bar Assoc.

(ABA), state that in the same year Congress
passed this law, it eliminated federal funding to
organizations that provide services to poor
defendants
The ABA also notes that the one-year statute of
limitations for filing federal habeas petitions set
by the AEDPA left indigent defendants with little
time & scarce resources to file for appeals

In 2003, officials in CA estimated that the state

spent $90 million on death penalty trials &
confinement
This amount was beyond the ordinary costs
incurred for trials in which life imprisonment
was the harshest possible sentence

According to a 2002 report, the cost of the

death penalty in Indiana was 38% greater than
the total cost of life-w/o-parole sentences
Idaho reported similar findings in 2003, saying
that it costs taxpayers app. $1 million to
imprison someone for life, compared to nearly
$5 million to impose the death penalty

Public Opinion & the Death Penalty

A May 2002 Gallup Poll revealed support for the
death penalty was high (the highest since May
1995) with 74% of Americans in favor & 24% in
opposition to the death penalty for those
convicted of murder
When given the choice of life imprisonment with
. . . absolutely no possibility of parole, or the
death penalty as punishment for murder, 53%
favored death while 44% opted for life
imprisonment

The Gallup Poll also indicated that ones

political affiliation can affect his or her position
on capital punishment
For example, 62% of political conservatives

favored the death penalty & 36% favored life

imprisonment
In contrast, 37% of political liberals favored the
death penalty, while 60% tended to favor life
imprisonment

Level of education also appears to play a role in

ones preference for capital punishment
Individuals with a postgraduate education
indicated a preference for life imprisonment
(62%), while those with a high school education
or less leaned toward the death penalty (56%)
A majority of Americans felt that the death penalty
is applied fairly, & 48% said that the death penalty
is not imposed often enough in the U.S.

Whos on Death Row?

The ABA calls the U.S. justice system a

haphazard maze of unfair practices with no
internal consistency
It cites a growing concern about recently enacted
federal & state laws that have limited appeals for
death row inmates & funding for death row
appeals
The ABAs Death Penalty Representation Project
is designed to reverse the U.S.s fatally flawed
administration of the death penalty

Through the project, the ABA seeks to

establish a national standard of practice that
ensures every capital defendant receives a
fair trial & competent legal representation:
Absent that, any resulting conviction is, by
definition, unjust
The ABA has called for an immediate ban on
the death penalty unless & until greater
fairness & due process prevail

Corrections

There are several treatment & punishment

options available to the government, including
halfway houses, mental facilities, & prisons
Some aspects of the correctional system also
focus on preparing the prisoner to re-enter
society

Race & Corrections

In 2003, the Maryland state legislature

commissioned a study which produced the
following results:
In 2002, African Americans nationally were

incarcerated at 7x the rate of Whites, & Latinos

were incarcerated at 2.5x the rate of Whites
African Americans & Latinos comprised 68% of all
prisoners in 2002, even though African Americans
& Latinos together make up just 25% of the U.S.
population

If incarceration rates continue at the

2001 level, 1 in 17 White men (5.9%), 1
in 6 Latino men (17%), & 1 in 3 African
American men (32%) born in 2001 will
serve time in prison at some point in
their lives

While Whites & African Americans use drugs

at similar rates, African Americans
represented 28% of the Maryland pop., but
represented 68% of those arrested for drug
offenses & 90% of those incarcerated for a
drug offense in 2001

In 2002, <1% of White men were incarcerated

in Maryland, whereas 5.6% of the African
American male pop. of the state were
incarcerated
Over half (56%) of all young African American
men in Baltimore were under some form of
criminal justice control

The report also discusses some of the

complex reasons why minorities are
overrepresented in the prison system:
Minorities tend to be arrested for certain behaviors

more often than Whites even though both groups

commit the same crimes at the same rates
Whites may have better access to drug treatment
facilities, which can reduce the likelihood of drugrelated offenses

Whites may have access to better legal

representation
Sentences for Latinos & African Americans tend to
be longer than sentences for Whites

These data tend to raise questions about bias

against African Americans & Latinos in the
criminal justice system, especially in law
enforcements anti-drug efforts

The impact of these facts is far-reaching, including

one report that noted that 1 in 7, or 14%, of African
American males is either currently or permanently
unable to vote due to a felony conviction
The issue of disproportionate minority confinement
presents many critical issues for the criminal justice
system & for society as a whole
For example, if people perceive they will not be treated

fairly, they may be less likely to cooperate at various

stages of the criminal justice processfrom coming
forward & testifying as witnesses to serving on juries

The problem also threatens the validity of

judicial decisions among members of minority
& majority communities alike . . . [It]
challenges the basic American assumption
that everyone receives equal justice under
law

The Prison System

Political leaders face tough choices about how to keep

their communities safe
Many politicians know that their voters want them to be
tough on crime, & one way to do that is to increase the
number of prisons
Advocates say the growth in the number of prisons &
jails is good for communities because new facilities
ease overcrowding & make it possible to put more
dangerous people behind bars & away from society
New prisons & jails also result in more jobs & boost
local economies

Opponents think the expense of building more

prisons is not justified in light of the trade-offs
For example, they suggest that putting more tax

money into schools, drug treatment programs, & job

training would result in fewer criminals

Jails Versus Prisons

Courts have held that pretrial inmates cannot be

subjected to conditions that amount to punishment, since
they have not been found guilty
Inmates who have been convicted cannot be subjected
to conditions that amount to cruel & unusual punishment
Despite this theoretical difference between the rights of
pretrial inmates & convicted inmates, the rights are
generally the same in jail as in prison
However, pretrial detainees have not been found guilty,
& therefore their rights cannot be limited in the interest of
rehabilitative efforts

Reentry

Ex-offenders face the challenges of reconnecting with

the outside world
They must rebuild the trust of their friends & families,
find a place to live, find a job, & learn how to live as lawabiding citizens
Law-related education programs can play a significant
role in helping offenders return to society by helping
them negotiate the rules & laws of communities
Specific lessons might feature employment, housing,
child abuse & neglect, police procedures, community
problem solving, etc.

Reentry programs can & should utilize

community resource people like lawyers,
judges, & police officers in order to help
people build trust & learn how to access
resources in their communities