mandatory sentence
- Related Topics:
- sentence
- three strikes law
What is mandatory sentencing?
What are some arguments for mandatory sentencing?
What are some criticisms of mandatory sentencing?
What alternatives exist to mandatory minimum sentencing in the United States?
a legal penalty, usually consisting of imprisonment, that courts are required by law to impose upon individuals who are found guilty of certain crimes, regardless of the circumstances specific to the individual or the offense. Such a sentence may also represent a minimum or maximum prison term for the crime in question.
Examples of countries with mandatory sentencing
Mandatory sentencing exists in many countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia.
United Kingdom
From the early 1980s the Court of Appeal, the highest court of the Senior Courts of England and Wales, subordinate only to the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, frequently set guidelines for legal sentencing through its own judgments. However, over the course of two decades, the rate at which the judgments occurred did not meet the existing need for guidance. In response, the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act established a Sentencing Advisory Panel of judges who drafted recommended sentences subject to the approval of the Court of Appeal. In 2009, under the Coroners and Justice Act, a council was established to create mandatory sentencing guidelines. The act required that the relevant guidelines be observed in all cases except those in which the court “is satisfied that it would be contrary to the interests of justice to do so.”
United States
In 1790 the U.S. Congress passed the Crimes Act, which formally identified 23 federal offenses. The act established minimum or maximum penalties for most of the specified crimes, including seven requiring punishment by death (murder, treason, three crimes related to piracy, forgery of a public security, and rescue of an individual convicted of a capital offense). The Crimes Act of 1825 reduced the number of capital crimes from seven to three: burning a house inhabited by soldiers on a military post, committing murder or rape on the high seas, and setting fire to a vessel of the United States. By the early 21st century, most federal capital crimes consisted of murder involving or originating in specific circumstances, including murder during kidnapping and murder for hire. Other capital crimes were treason, espionage, and aircraft hijacking resulting in death.
In the second half of the 20th century, Congress enacted a historically extensive revision of the federal criminal code. The Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 established the United States Sentencing Commission to ensure consistent sentencing for federal crimes, introduced mandatory minimum sentences for crimes involving illegal drugs, and effectively removed eligibility for parole for those confined in federal prisons. In fiscal year 2010 more than half of all individuals in federal prisons (53 percent) had been convicted of crimes carrying mandatory minimum sentences. That number increased to 61 percent by fiscal year 2016.
Australia
Mandatory sentencing has been implemented throughout Australia, though each state or territory has its own sentencing laws. Western Australia, for example, imposes mandatory sentences for individuals who commit three or more home burglaries, the Northern Territory has mandatory sentences for violent crimes such as rioting and domestic violence, and New South Wales has minimum non-parole periods for crimes including murder, drug trafficking, and sexual assault. In 1999 the Northern Territory amended its sentencing law to permit alternatives to minimum sentences in “exceptional circumstances.”
Arguments for and against mandatory sentencing
Since its inception, mandatory sentencing, particularly mandatory minimums, has received both ardent support and harsh criticism. Proponents argue that the merits of such a system outweigh any faults. They generally believe that mandatory sentencing is an effective deterrent to crime, given that the legal consequences of criminal behavior cannot be avoided and that the penalties for repeat offenders increase exponentially with each new crime. According to proponents, mandatory sentencing is a fairer treatment of criminals because it eliminates the possibility that sentencing will be influenced by the personal biases of judges or the public prejudices of entire judicial districts.
Critics of mandatory sentencing argue that it effectively shifts the responsibility of deciding the length of prison terms from judges to prosecutors, who can trigger different mandatory minimums by their method of prosecution and the charges they bring. According to critics, the shift to prosecutorial power has resulted in increased racial bias in sentencing. A 2014 study by the University of Michigan Law School found that prosecutors in the United States tend to bring charges with mandatory minimums more frequently against Black citizens than against white citizens. Partly as a result of this disparity, the prison sentences given to Black people are on average 10 percent longer than those assigned to white people for the same crime.
Critics also contend that mandatory sentencing actually fails to deter crime, as indicated in the rise in incarceration in the United States, which has been proportional to the increase in mandatory sentencing since the 1970s. During the early and mid-20th century, the incarceration rate in the United States was 100 prisoners for every 100,000 residents, a figure roughly below the average among other countries. Between 1972 and 2008, a period in which application and development of mandatory sentencing increased—particularly during the 1980s, when minimum sentences were implemented for drug-related crimes—the United States’ incarcerated population grew to 760 per 100,000.
Alternatives to mandatory minimums
Several U.S. states have incorporated sentencing guidelines as an alternative to mandatory sentencing. Sentencing guidelines are systems of judicial recommendations created by expert-led commissions. Typically these guidelines give courts a range of prison time for convicted criminals based on factors including criminal records and the gravity of the offense. Such alternative systems enable judges to sentence at, above, or below the relevant guidelines to address the circumstances of the offense.