Quotes About Sentencing

Mandatory sentencing guidelines have become as complicated and detailed as the IRS code!

I'm intending to work on juvenile justice reform, sentencing reform, reentry, drug treatment, access to mental health care.

After years of hiding and holding off because of the trial, I finally announced my intent to change my name and transition to living as woman on 22 August 2013 - the day following my sentencing - a personal high point for me, despite my other circumstances.

Once the screws left, most of the six or seven boys who had been overpowered by the SAS were not in any fit state to move, never mind talk. In May 1988 Malkie and Sammo and one other boy, whose name escapes me right now, got a total of twenty-seven years between them for mobbing and rioting and assault.

'Getting smart on crime' does not mean reducing sentences or punishments for crimes.

Every judge should have real-time access to the criminal background and history of defendants who appear in their courtrooms - so that sentencing and bail decisions can be made with that information.

Throughout the 1970s, '80s and '90s, federal mandatory minimum laws were implemented that forced judges to deliver sentences far lengthier than they would have if allowed to use their own discretion. The result has been decades of damage, particularly to young people.

Mandatory minimum sentencing has disproportionately affected blacks, Hispanics and others who often don't have the financial means to fight back.

Data do not indicate that mandatory minimum sentences keep our communities safer. Instead, mandatory minimums are disproportionately harming people and communities of color.

Similarly, the amendments covering the criminal justice system—the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth—have offered little to no protection for African Americans because of numerous Supreme Court decisions that have embedded racism and racial profiling into policing, trial procedures, and sentencing.

Something's going to happen that's going to make us all pay attention at the type of sentences some people are serving and the conditions in which they are served.

The length of sentences depends upon the criminal's wealth and type of legal help more than upon the seriousness of his transgression. Court procedures are slow and cumbersome. It is the poor and stupid criminal who gets the heaviest sentences - so the aim of criminals is to become rich and cunning, and thus avoid the harshest penalties.

it seemed that all the people who were sentenced that day had made, or clearly were going to make, crime their career. This seemed to be the opinion of the judge, who scarcely looked at the prisoners or listened to them; it seemed to be the opinion of the prisoners, who scarcely bothered to speak in their own behalf; it seemed to be the opinion of the lawyers, state lawyers for the most part, who were defending them.

When you talk about mandatory minimums, it created a lot of unfairness in our sentencing.

but only a moment's reflection is necessary to realize that, where there is a choice of incarceration and so-called community sentencing, a reduction in the rate of recidivism is perfectly compatible with a rise, even a huge rise, in the numbers of crimes committed; and vice versa, with a rise in the rate of recidivism coincident with a fall, even a dramatic fall, in the rate of crime.

Sentencing Packer, Judge Melville Gerry gave vent to his feelings along unexpectedly political lines: "There were only seven Democrats in Hinsdale County, and you ate five of them, you depraved Republican son-of-a-bitch!

While awaiting sentencing, I decided to give stand-up comedy a shot. The judge had suggested I get my act together, and I took him seriously.

Earlier in [2007] the [Prime Minister's Office] had also drawn criticism for trying to muzzle the judiciary. The reproach came from Antonio Lamer, the former chief justice of the Supreme Court....'I must say I was taken aback,' said Lamer, who sat on the Supreme Court for twenty years. 'The prime minister is going the wrong route as regards the independence of the judiciary. He's trying to interfere with the sentencing process.

Although victims do not always become perpetrators, a truism repeated by prosecutors at sentencing, as if it were a profound revelation never before put into words, it is the rare serious perpetrator who was not also a victim. . . . It is the rare death row inmate whose life does not read like a case study of extreme deprivation and abuse. It is the rare juvenile incarcerated in an adult prison for rape or murder who has had anything other than the cruelest of childhoods.

The majority of our criminals that we lock up are non-violent offenders.

I believe indeterminate sentencing can be extremely useful, but I also believe that any such system should always take into consideration the special knowledge as to the facts in a case which only the trial judge possesses.

lesser charge, or a lighter sentence, or both.

The father of Ruth van Cleve's child, she reports, is under the protection and care of the Norfolk County Correctional Authority, awaiting sentencing for what Ruth van Cleve describes several times as operating a pharmaceutical company without a license.

I put my arms around you," she would tell Michael Stankewicz from the witness stand on the day he was sentenced. "To comfort you.