Sentencing guidelines & intermediate sanctions are two of the most significant criminal justice policy developments in recent decades. Half the States have adopted or considered statewide guidelines; & in early 1997, sentencing commissions were at work in more than 20 States. Intermediate sanctions have proliferated since 1980. This report describes separately the past 20 years of the respective policy & research developments of sentencing guidelines & intermediate sanctions; & the modest efforts, to date, to combine the two. Includes suggestions of next steps that policymakers might consider. Tables & figures.
This book is a step-by-step guide to the sentencing of felonies, misdemeanors, and impaired driving in North Carolina. It includes the felony and misdemeanor sentencing grids that apply under Structured Sentencing and a table showing the different sentencing levels for DWI. The book also includes materials on diversion programs (deferred prosecution and conditional discharge), probation supervision, fines and fees, and sex offender registration.
Across the country prisons are jammed to capacity and, in extreme cases, barges and mobile homes are used to stem the overflow. Probation officers in some cities have caseloads of 200 and more--hardly a manageable number of offenders to track and supervise. And with about one million people in prison and jail, and two and a half million on probation, it is clear we are experiencing a crisis in our penal system. In Between Prison and Probation, Norval Morris and Michael Tonry, two of the nation's leading criminologists, offer an important and timely strategy for alleviating these problems. They argue that our overwhelmed corrections system cannot cope with the flow of convicted offenders because the two extremes of punishment--imprisonment and probation--are both used excessively, with a near-vacuum of useful punishments in between. Morris and Tonry propose instead a comprehensive program that relies on a range of punishment including fines and other financial sanctions, community service, house arrest, intensive probation, closely supervised treatment programs for drugs, alcohol and mental illness, and electronic monitoring of movement. Used in rational combinations, these "intermediate" punishments would better serve the community than our present polarized choice. Serious consideration of these punishments has been hindered by the widespread perception that they are therapeutic rather than punitive. The reality, however, Morris and Tonry argue, "is that the American criminal justice system is both too severe and too lenient--almost randomly." Systematically implemented and rigorously enforced, intermediate punishments can "better and more economically serve the community, the victim, and the criminal than the prison terms and probation orders they supplant." Between Prison and Probation goes beyond mere advocacy of an increasing use of intermediate punishments; the book also addresses the difficult task of fitting these punishments into a comprehensive, fair and community-protective sentencing system.
This handbook surveys American sentencing and corrections from global and historical views, from theoretical and policy perspectives, and with attention to a number of problem-specific issues.
