Politics of Sentencing Reform: The Legislative History of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines

• NCJ Number: 150650
• Journal: Wake Forest Law Review Volume: 28 Issue: 2 Dated: (Summer 1993) Pages: 223- 290
• Author(s): K Stith; S Y Koh
• Date Published: 1993
• Length: 68 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Legislation/Policy Analysis
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: *This document is currently unavailable from NCJRS.

Annotation

Since they were promulgated in 1987, the Federal sentencing guidelines have received little praise and much criticism from the legal community.

Abstract

The authors believe that the Sentencing Reform Act is complex and has resulted in lengthy and ambiguous guidelines and that the sentencing guidelines have led to a Federal sentencing jurisprudence almost entirely based on tangential issues. Despite their general reluctance to become publicly engaged in political disputes, many individual judges oppose the sentencing guidelines. The history of how criminal justice reformers came to embrace sentencing guidelines and the history of legislative efforts to pass the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 are reviewed. The limited role of the organized Federal judiciary in the development and enactment of Federal sentencing reform legislation is considered. The authors conclude that the Sentencing Reform Act itself, and not simply the U.S. Sentencing Commission's implementation of the statute, is a primary source of rigidity and harshness in Federal sentencing guidelines. 413 footnotes