User:Jerichorajninger/Criminal justice reform in the United States
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Criminal justice reform addresses structural issues in criminal justice systems such as racial profiling, police brutality, overcriminalization, mass incarceration, and recidivism. Reforms can take place at any point where the criminal justice system intervenes in citizens’ lives, including lawmaking, policing, sentencing and incarceration. There are many organizations that advocate to reform the criminal justice system such as: ACLU, Penal Reform International, Sentencing Project, Brennan Center for Justice, Cut 50 and the Innocence Project. These organizations use legal disputes and advocacy as well as educational events to make the problems aware to the public and push state and federal governments toward reform. Most states have a criminal justice reform act as well.
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Sentencing (added to existing content)
Sentencing laws within the U.S. criminal justice system are criticized for being both draconian and racially discriminatory. Sentencing reform can reduce lengthy penalties for violent and nonviolent crimes, make it more difficult to incarcerate people for minor offenses, increase parole grants, improve prison programming, and even expedite the release of eligible insiders, all of which have been proven to contribute to decarceration.[1]
Sentencing regulation (added to existing content)
Individuals are sentenced more often and for longer in the United States, with the average sentence in the U.S. being nearly twice as long as Australian and five times as long as German sentences.[2] Truth in Sentencing laws and mandatory minimums are perceived to be two forms of draconian policies that contribute to mass incarceration.
Truth in sentencing law requires that offenders serve the majority of their sentences before being eligible for release, restricting or eliminating sentencing exceptions such as good-time, earned-time, and parole board release.[3] The majority of truth in sentencing laws require offenders to complete at least 85% of their sentence.[3] Due to the formation of the Violent Offender Incarceration and Truth-in-Sentencing Incentive Grants Program by Congress in 1994, states are given grants if they require violent offenders to serve at least 85% of their sentences.[3]
Mandatory minimums are laws that require judges to sentence an individual to a specified minimum prison sentence for the committed crime.[4] One intention of mandatory minimums was to create uniformity in how people were punished for crimes. But mandatory minimums have often resulted in unnecessarily harsh sentences for low-level offenders and are believed to contribute to racial disparities in prison. Mandatory minimums also shift power from the power of judges to prosecutors, who have the ability to use the threat of an extremely long sentence in order to pressure defendants into accepting a plea bargain.[4] Repealing mandatory minimums, one avenue for sentencing reform, would return power to impartial judges and allow a more flexible approach to sentencing that could help create alternatives to incarceration.[5]
References
- ^ "Decarceration Strategies: How 5 States Achieved Substantial Prison Population Reductions". The Sentencing Project. Retrieved 2021-04-26.
- ^ "How Truth in Sentencing Keeps Prisons Full – GenFKD". [FKD]. 2015-12-17. Retrieved 2018-03-10.
- ^ a b c Inc., US Legal. "Truth in Sentencing Law and Legal Definition | USLegal, Inc". definitions.uslegal.com. Retrieved 2018-03-10.
{{cite web}}:|last=has generic name (help) - ^ a b "Mandatory Minimums and Sentencing Reform". Criminal Justice Policy Foundation. Retrieved 2018-03-10.
- ^ "Decarceration Strategies: How 5 States Achieved Substantial Prison Population Reductions". The Sentencing Project. Retrieved 2021-04-26.