Abstract
Sentencing guidelines ushered in a new and hopefully better era of criminal sentencing. To properly assess the current state of sentencing and sentencing guidelines, one must look backward and adequately identify the players involved. Although the judge is the most visible sentencing participant, many others, such as the jury, prosecutors, parole boards, legislatures, and most recently, sentencing commissions, significantly influence the sentencing process. Sentencing guidelines, which emerged in the late 1970s, were seen as an innovative solution to troubling sentencing disparities. While sentencing guidelines are far from comprehensive and flawless, they appear to be the best option for moving toward a sentencing system that is truly equal and fair. In a perfect world, perhaps sentencing guidelines would have been the one-stop, cure-all solution to all that ails American sentencing. For now, in the real world, sentencing guidelines reflect unfinished innovation with the potential for greatness.
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Notes
- 1.
Some jurisdictions still allow for administrative reductions, say of 15%, in an individual’s custody duration, which is commonly referred to as “good time.” As these reductions are not discretionary, the sentences are still deemed to be determinate.
- 2.
As noted above, no sentencing guidelines have successfully addressed prosecutorial discretion despite its significance to the sentencing enterprise. Nevertheless, there is a nascent effort for prosecutors to voluntarily evaluate themselves according to private metrics. If embraced more widely, they could be connected to sentencing guidelines in some fashion. However, one such approach evaluates prosecutors positively in part by tracking how often they recommend sentences below the guideline minimum (Prosecutorial Performance Indicators, 2021). While recommending that a guideline be made more or less severe is one way to influence the system, it would seem inconsistent with the guidelines movement to praise prosecutors for routinely seeking sentences below the applicable guidelines in typical cases.
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Chanenson, S.L., Arty, K. (2022). Unfinished Innovation: American Sentencing Guidelines. In: Jeglic, E., Calkins, C. (eds) Handbook of Issues in Criminal Justice Reform in the United States. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77565-0_7
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