Policies and Imprisonment: The Impact of Structured Sentencing and Determinate Sentencing on State Incarceration Rates, 1978–2004

Research has begun to systematically assess the relationship between sentencing policies and state incarceration rates. Prior studies, however, have examined policy‐based relationships in isolation, failing to consider the impact of combinations of policies. Using a pooled time series design, this article examines interactions between structured sentencing, determinate sentencing, and state incarceration rates between 1978 and 2004. Results show that constraining release discretion through determinate sentencing matters more than constraining sentencing discretion through structured sentencing. Consistent with prior research, determinate sentencing was associated with lower incarceration rates independent of other policies. Contrary to prior research, however, the presence of presumptive sentencing guidelines was associated with lower incarceration rates only when combined with determinate sentencing. These findings suggest that while a state may effectively insulate sentencing decisions from outside social forces, if it fails to insulate release decisions from those same forces, they will continue to affect imprisonment levels.     

Sentencing Guidelines and focal concerns: The effect of sentencing policy as a practical constraint on sentencing decisions

Contemporary research on criminal sentencing has analyzed sentencing under numerous sentencing policies, yet the effect of sentencing policy on outcomes and disparity is not known. A variety of sentencing guidelines systems, one of the more common sentencing policies, exists throughout the country. In addition, recent Supreme Court decisions regarding sentencing guidelines are likely to produce alterations to several state sentencing policies over the next few years. Using data from the state of Florida, the current study examines the effects of policy transformation on sentencing disparity within the focal concerns of sentencing perspective. The authors view sentencing guidelines as a practical constraint on sentencing decisions that influence other key variables. The results indicate that sentencing policy transformation has an important effect on both sentencing decisions and on the factors that shape those decisions. The findings suggest that future sentencing research and theoretical development would benefit from incorporating measures of policy differences in its analyses.     

Structured Sentencing in Florida: Is the Experiment Over?

This article considers the history of structured sentencing in Florida, beginning with initial efforts to establish sentencing guidelines in 1977 and culminating in legislative action that abolishes the guidelines effective 1 October 1998 and establishes the Florida Criminal Punishment Code effective the same date. The conclusion of the article is that structured sentencing has never been widely accepted in Florida and that the Florida Criminal Punishment Code will probably be received in the same manner. Sentencing guidelines have been perceived by prosecutors and law enforcement officials as too lenient and by judges as too restrictive on their discretion. Outside factors such as prison population growth and political concerns have had a tremendous effect on sentencing policy. It is unlikely that the process of constant ferment and change in the Florida sentencing system will end any time soon since the Florida Criminal Punishment Code embodies essentially the same structure and principles as the guidelines it replaces.     

Sentencing Councils and Victims

This article explores the place victims have, and should have, in bodies that formulate sentencing guidelines, with particular reference to sentencing guidelines in England and Wales and the Sentencing Council's obligation under the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 to have regard to ‘the impact of sentencing decisions on victims of offences’ when devising guidelines. The issues are situated in political and penological contexts; the place of victims in sentencing commissions or advisory bodies in the USA, England and Australia is analysed and the meaning and significance of the Sentencing Council's obligation towards victims is considered, relating the specific obligation to broader issues concerning the place of victims within bodies that formulate sentencing guidelines. While incorporating victims within sentencing commissions might undermine commissions’ aims, it can play an important role in helping to boost public confidence in criminal justice, a touchstone for all western governments’ criminal justice policies.     

COURT COMMUNITIES UNDER SENTENCING GUIDELINES: DILEMMAS OF FORMAL RATIONALITY AND SENTENCING DISPARITY

Efforts to structure sentencing through guidelines involve a fundamental dilemma for the sociology of law—guidelines attempt to emphasize formal rationality and uniformity (Savelsberg, 1992) while allowing discretion to tailor sentences to fit situations and characteristics of individual defendants when courts deem it warranted (substantive rationality). This exercise of substantive rationality in sentencing based on "extralegal" criteria deemed relevant by local court actors risks the kind of unwarranted disparity that guidelines were intended to reduce. We view local courts as arenas in which two sets of sentencing standards meet—formal rational ones articulated by guidelines vs. substantive, extralegal criteria deemed relevant by local court actors. We use statistical and qualitative data from Pennsylvania, a state whose courts have operated under sentencing guidelines for over a decade. Our analysis examines extralegal differences in three county courts' sentencing outcomes, and then documents ways in which substantive rational sentencing criteria are intertwined with defendants' exercise of their right to trial and their race and gender.     

Deviation from sentencing guidelines: The issue of unwarranted disparity

There has been a recent trend toward sentencing guidelines in the United States, and Florida followed this pattern by adopting sentencing guidelines in 1983. The present study examined whether several extra-legal variables excluded from the guidelines influenced the elimination of unwarranted sentencing disparity following the implementation of Florida's guidelines. Age seemed to have no influence but the factors of whether there was a plea or trial, whether there was a probation or community control violation, and sex all influenced unwarranted sentencing disparity in varying degrees. The policy implications of these findings for developing sentencing guidelines are discussed.     

STATE POLITICAL CULTURE AND SENTENCE SEVERITY IN FEDERAL DISTRICT COURTS

Previous studies have established a strong relationship between state politics and policies and have documented the role of state politics in the recruitment of federal judges. This study uses indicators of the political. policy, and socioeconomic characteristics of the American states to explain variance in the severity of sentences rendered in 1970 cases involving violation of the Selective Service Act. The findings reveal that a substantial proportion of the sentencing variation in these cases is associated with the political, policy, and socioeconomic environments of the state in which the case is adjudicated. Consistent with mast of the literature on state policy variance, it is found that the socioeconomic environment is a more effective predictor than either state politics or policy.     

An argument for self-imposed explicit judicial sentencing standards

Despite considerable attention, unwarranted disparity in sentencing remains a major and pervasive criminal justice problem. In this paper the argument is made that the most appropriate remedy lies not in an attempt to eliminate judicial sentencing discretion, but rather through the development and articulation of explicit sentencing standards or guidelines. Building upon the experience gained in a recent study with the United States Board of Parole, a model is put forth for the development and articulation of sentencing policy on a district or circuit basis that could be applied to structure and control discretion without removing individual case consideration.     

Sentencing Commissions as Centers for Policy Analysis and Research: Illustrations from the Budget Process

Sentencing commissions have become centers for policy analysis and research, studying the problems of prison crowding and resource limits (Reitz 1997). However, more information is needed regarding how commissions perform this function. This paper focuses on the role of sentencing commissions as centers of policy analysis during state budget processes. Also discussed is an important stage for policy research, the evaluation of alternative policies by means of computer simulation, a modeling tool frequently employed by sentencing commissions. Following a discussion of computer simulation principles, several prominent simulation models used by sentencing commissions are reviewed. Finally, the activities of Virginia's sentencing commission demonstrate how commissions serve as policy research centers.     

Disproportional Imprisonment of Black and Hispanic Males: Sentencing Discretion,Processing Outcomes,and Policy Structures

Disproportional incarceration of black and Hispanic men has been the subject of much critical commentary and empirical inquiry. Such disproportionality may be due to greater involvement of minority men in serious crime, to discretionary decisions by local justice officials, or to the differential impact of sentencing policies, such as mandatory minimums or sentencing guidelines, that differentially impact minority men. This study investigated the extent to which the disproportional punishment of black and Hispanic men, and local variation in such disproportionality, can be attributed to unexplained disparities in local sentencing decisions, as opposed to the extent to which such differences are mediated by sentencing policies, or case-processing and extralegal factors. We use 2005–2009 federal court and Pennsylvania state court data. Our findings suggest, particularly in Federal courts, that most disproportionality is determined by processes prior to sentencing, especially sentencing policies that differentially impact minority males.     

Courtroom Context and Sentencing

This study provides an evaluation of the major policy shift in sentencing practices over the past half-century – namely the shift from indeterminate to determinant sentencing policies and the use of sentencing guidelines. The theoretical literature on courtroom organization and focal concerns informs this evaluation of determinate sentencing practices in Florida. Drawing from prior theoretical and empirical research, hierarchical linear and generalized linear models are estimated to assess courtroom effects on individual level sentencing outcomes. The findings document that location matters when sentenced in Florida. Specifically, the likelihood of being sentenced to prison and the length of sentence varies across counties, even after controlling for individual case and offender characteristics and a variety of contextual characteristics. Additionally, the influence of legal and extra-legal factors on prison in/out and sentence length decisions varies significantly across counties. Several court characteristics, including court size, caseload pressure and trial rate assert direct influence on a county’s likelihood of prison in/out and mean sentence length decisions.

     

Taking the Law Into Our Own Hands: Structured Sentencing, Fear of Violence, and Citizen Initiatives in Washington State

This paper examines the impact of citizen initiatives on Washington State's system of structured sentencing. Criminal justice sentencing guidelines were implemented in Washington's juvenile court system in 1978 and in its adult felony courts in 1984. In the twenty years since, both systems have experienced significant changes, many of which impact judicial and administrative discretion. Early modifications to the guidelines were driven by legislative and administrative concerns (budgeting, prison population management). More recent changes have been driven by citizen initiatives fostered as a response to public fear of crime and violence. Increasingly, the public has rejected the advice and management of adult sentencing guidelines by criminal justice professionals, and taken a direct hand through the initiative process in setting the limits of judicial and administrative discretion. As a result, structured sentencing has become more complicated and less internally consistent. It remains unclear whether this is the inevitable price of growth in single issue politics and more direct public involvement in the determination of sentencing policy     

Beyond Sentencing Guidelines: Additional Functions for Intermediate Sentencing Entities

The first part of this two-part special issue on structured sentencing in the U.S. focused on individual jurisdictions and the relationship of five types of sentencing reforms to judicial discretion and to the political and legal forces that originated, maintained, altered or sometimes ended the reform. This issue moves the focus to a comparative one, looking across a variety of different jurisdictions to report common threads of advantage and disadvantage to the various structured sentencing systems. Originating in political and legal arenas, structured sentencing affects not only the sentencing process, but can itself affect the political process and the distribution of sanctioning discretion among the different branches of government.     

英美法系国家量刑指南制度的比较研究

量刑指南是指导法官裁量刑罚的准则.为了防止量刑偏差和量刑失衡问题,限制法官的自由裁量权,英美法系国家普遍制定了明确的量刑指南.其中,美国量刑指南制度是中国刑法理论研究较多的一个问题.实际上,在英美法系领域,产生了三种不同模式的量刑指南制度:美国数量化量刑指南、英国论理式量刑指南和澳大利亚信息化量刑指南.相比较而言,英国量刑指南制度对我国量刑制度的改革更具参考和借鉴意义.     

THE IMPACT OF SENTENCING GUIDELINES ON JAIL INCARCERATION IN MINNESOTA*

Although available empirical evidence suggests that Minnesota's Determinate Sentencing Law has had little effect on prison incarceration, it is still uncertain whether the sentencing guidelines affected jail use. A few recent studies imply that the guidelines have had a positive effect on jail incarceration rates. Accounts have pointed to preexisting trends, more severe sanctioning of repeat property offenders, and judicial concern with prison overcrowding as possible underlying causes of this observed increase. Using longitudinal data and an ARIMA study design, we investigate the validity of these competing explanations. Our findings show that the onset of the sentencing guidelines increased judicial use of the jail sanction beyond the effect of preexisting trends. In addition, the effect of mitigated dispositional departures from the no prison/prison outcome on jail use is salient only when prison population levels are high. This latter finding supports the thesis that judicial concern with prison overcrowding motivated judges to circumvent the guidelines in order to shift the burden of incarcerating offenders from the state to the local level. The policy implications of these results for determinate sentencing reform are discussed.     

Have Federal Sentencing Guidelines Reduced Severity? An Examination of One Circuit

Congress intended to make the sentencing process less discretionary and more equitable for similarly situated defendants when it passed the U.S. Sentencing Reform Act of 1984. Sentencing guidelines were devised to promote these changes. After more than a decade of implementation, however, little is known about the impact of the new policy. This paper examines sentences given between 1993 and 1994 in one federal circuit in an effort to determine whether this policy instrument has achieved success. The theoretical model of a rational case processing system (Gottfredson and Gottfredson, 1980) is used to guide the interpretation of our findings and the recommendations we offer for improvements.     

The impact of state sentencing policies on the U.S. prison population

This article examines the aggregate effects of neoclassical sentencing reforms on three often contested outcomes of these reforms. The rate of new court commitments, the average length of time inmates serve, and prison population rates across the fifty U.S. states and the District of Columbia are examined. Data from 1973 to 1998 across these jurisdictions are analyzed using hierarchical multivariate linear models (HMLM). Results show that on the aggregate, sentencing reforms are not directly related to changes in state prison populations; however, abolition of parole is negatively associated with state prison population rates. Two types of sentencing reforms, the voluntary sentencing guidelines and the ‘three-strikes’ laws are indirectly related to changes in prison populations and have opposite influences on rates of new court commitments. Of six sentencing practices examined, not one is associated with length of incarceration. These results do not support the contention that neoclassical changes to the nation's sentence policies account for the rapid increase in the state prison populations between the early 1970s and late 1990s.     

EVALUATING THE COOK COUNTY SENTENCING GUIDELINES

This article examines the empirical basis for current criminal sentencing guidelines being used in Cook County, Illinois. Unlike in many other sentencing reforms, guidelines have generally been developed out of an empirical analysis of past sentencing decisions through the identification of variables most predictive of sentence. However, when the statistical analysis is inadequate or faulty, the resultant sentencing guidelines must be questioned. Presented is a reanalysis of the original data used to develop Cook County's sentencing guidelines. Generally, the current sentencing guidelines used in Cook County are not found to be predictive of sentence. Implications of this finding are discussed.     

The effect of local policy on the sentencing patterns of state wards

A large number of studies have identified individual and offense characteristics that predict the severity of criminal justice system sanctions against juvenile delinquents. However, very few studies have examined the effect of local decision making procedures and funding practices on sentencing outcomes. As such local practices could have important effects on sentencing, the present study compared the sentencing of juvenile state wards in counties that differ markedly in local policies. The hypothesis was that the availability of state, as opposed to local, funding for institutional placement (called a “charge-back” policy) in one of the counties would result in a more severe sentencing decisions and that this county's use of board of decision makers instead of individual caseworkers would result in harsher treatment of youths differentiated by minority status, sex, or family status. This difference might be due to the board's insulation from review.