NCJ Number
122274
Journal
Federal Probation Volume: 53 Issue: 4 Dated: (December 1989) Pages: 3-11
Date Published
1989
Length
9 pages
Annotation
Unlike the U.S. Sentencing Commission, which recommended that judges not reduce a presumptive sentence because of the offender's drug or alcohol dependence, this article proposes a dual perspective: that intoxication be a mitigating factor at sentencing if it impaired the offender's ability to determine right from wrong, but as an aggravating factor if intoxication has repeatedly resulted in criminal conduct.
Abstract
The criminal justice system deals with intoxicated offenders in each of a series of discretionary decisions: whether a police officer will arrest an offender, whether a prosecutor will allow him to plead guilty to a lesser charge, and whether his defense will try to use intoxication as a basis for an acquittal. These factors impact on the length and nature of the offender's sentence. Four basic policy questions should determine whether the sentence should be more lenient or more severe for intoxicated offenders. The first, whether substance abuse contributes directly to crime, can be answered yes. The second concerns intoxication as a voluntary conduct. Despite the disease model of alcoholism, the judicial perspective, as endorsed by the Supreme Court, is that while alcoholism is a deeply entrenched way of life, alcoholics can legitimately be punished for criminal behavior and that alcoholism associated with that behavior can be an aggravating sentencing factor. The prospects for treatment is the third policy consideration. Studies indicate that alcoholics who undergo treatment have a good chance of success and that even forced treatment may be effective; only a small minority who do not undergo treatment will recover. And fourthly, the purpose of sentencing -- deterrence, incapacitation, retribution, and rehabilitation -- should influence and inform policies dealing with the sentencing of intoxicated offenders. 74 notes.