ACLU: Threat to Current Sentencing Law Looms: Are We Headed Back to Mandatory Guidelines?

[marmar]

Threat to Current Sentencing Law Looms: Are We Headed Back to Mandatory Guidelines?


The debate over sentencing guidelines is about to heat up in Congress, according to a recent report by NPR. In a story that ran on Tuesday’s Morning Edition, Carrie Johnson reports that some GOP members of Congress aren’t happy with the current state of federal sentencing guidelines.

For decades, mandatory sentencing guidelines forced judges to hand down harsh and unfair sentences that did not always fit the offender and unnecessarily flooded our prisons. This included the mandatory sentencing scheme that unequally punished comparable offenses involving crack and powder cocaine at a ratio of 100:1 and resulted in racially biased sentencing.

But in 2005, the Supreme Court ruled in U.S. v. Booker that the sentencing guidelines were advisory, not mandatory. While judges were required to consult the guidelines, they had flexibility to take into account other factors and ensure that sentences were not greater than necessary. The ACLU applauded this decision as a step toward fairness and more sensible sentencing.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission, which developed the original mandatory guidelines, continues to play a critical role in shaping sentencing guidelines. Last year, the commission recommended that the new, fairer sentencing guidelines for crack cocaine offenses established by the Fair Sentencing Act (FSA) should be applied retroactively to people sentenced before the FSA was passed. The FSA reduced the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine offenses — two forms of the same drug — from 100:1 to 18:1 (an improvement, although the fairest guidelines would be 1:1). .....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.aclu.org/blog/criminal-law-reform/threat-current-sentencing-law-looms-are-we-headed-back-mandatory-guidelines

[annabanana]

1. Mandatory sentences benefit only the

Prison Industrial Complex. They make slave labor available for those in a position to exploit it.

[T S Justly]

2. K&R (nt)