Sentencing Guidelines

I'm on a group project looking at sentencing guidelines from a historical perspective, pros and cons, etc. - mostly from state perspectives, but I get to throw in some federal stuff. We present in a week and a half.

It's a great group. Very hard working and oh so young!! They are all just a few years older than T.S. I forget how old I must seem to them. They all look to me as thier leader and I try to look to them, but they are less than a month into graduate school and still scared. A feeling I do not share.

Anyway, I think our presentation is looking fabulous! Honestly, I'm learning a lot about how sentencing guidelines came to be. They started to stop the disparities that were occurring in sentencing based on race and gender, but the problem was that (and continues to be) that people are individuals. Ever since thier initial passage 20 years ago, they have gone through amendment after amendment as commissions and legislatures grapple with how mandatory or discretionary the guidelines should be.

Federally, we see the guidelines moving away from mandatory. In over 50% of cases, judges sentence below the guidelines. Drug related mandatory guidelines are reducing this November.  Sentencing guidelines results in overcrowded prisons and the inability for alternative programs to prisons being considered.

Problem is, there are still disparities in sentencing. In the end, I will need to answer, did sentencing guidelines fix the problems of race and gender disparities. The answer is no. People of color are still receiving longer sentences for similar crimes and women receive shorter sentences than men. If it didn't fix the problem, then we need to really consider a better way to fix the problem - perhaps mandatory maximums! Now, that's a concept!!!!