Research on Sentencing The Search for Reform, Volume I (1983) / Chapter Skim
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4 Sentencing Reforms and Their Effects
4 Sentencing Reforms and Their Effects
Pages 184-224
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From page 184... ...
. We are primarily concerned with the effectiveness of sentencing reforms as a means of reducing disparities, altering sentence severity, and making decision making systematic.
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From page 185... ...
Formal compliance with the requirements of innovations has been widespread: assistant prosecutors have adhered to plea-bargaining bans and restrictions; parole board examiners have tended to set release dates that are consistent with applicable parole guidelines provisions; judges have tended to adhere to statutory sentencing standards, especially mandatory minimum sentence laws. Outside the parole context, however, compliance has often been formal rather than substantive.
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From page 186... ...
Pleabargaining bans, mandatory minimum sentencing laws, Minnesota's presumptive sentencing guidelines, California's determinate sentencing law, and parole guidelines commonly result in substantial formal compliance. Voluntary sentencing guidelines have not been shown to achieve high rates of formal compliance.
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From page 187... ...
The study concluded that "plea bargaining as an institution was clearly curtailed" (Rubinstein et al., 1980:314. Sentence bargaining and prosecutorial sentence recommendations declined abruptly from 43.5 to 13.1 percent of all cases in the three jurisdictions.
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From page 188... ...
Under New York's "Rockefeller" drug laws, which went into effect on September 1, 1973, severe mandatory prison sentences were prescribed for narcotics offenses at all levels, and selective statutory limits were placed on plea bargaining. The Joint Committee on New York Drug Law Evaluation (1978)
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From page 189... ...
DETERMINATE SENTENCING IN CALIFORNIA The original California Determinate Sentencing Law (DSL) took effect July 1, 1977, and was amended twice in 1978 to increase the severity of penalties for some offenses.2 The DSL prescribes three base terms for each crime (e.g., for robbery the terms are 2, 3, or 5 years)
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From page 190... ...
190 ~ ax ~ _' Ct ._ ._ E Ct ._ ._ Ct .
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From page 191... ...
This contrasts sharply with enhancements for victim injury and prior prison, which were charged and proved in less than 25 percent of eligible cases among persons admitted to prison. The statutes impose no obligation on prosecutors to charge or prove facts that would support an enhancement.
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From page 192... ...
The early indication from internal evaluations by the guidelines TABLE ~2 Percentage of Cases Sentenced Consistently With Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines Presumptive Outs77 Who Were Sentenced "Out77 Presumptive ``Ins77 Who Were Sentenced "Ink 1978 baseline cases 86 44 198~1981 sentences imposed 96 77 NOTE: The figures in this table were estimated from data provided by Knapp (1982)
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From page 193... ...
As shown in Table 3-1, the Minnesota guidelines are expressed in a grid format; cases falling in cells above the in/out line should receive "out" sentences (i.e., stayed state prison terms) , and cases falling in cells below the line should receive state prison sentences.
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From page 194... ...
Plausible arguments have been made that parole release operates in important respects as a monitoring system for sentencing- evening out disparities in the lengths of prison terms and providing a device to relieve prison crowding; the Maine evaluations have not provided insights into these or other questions. It is to be hoped that other evaluations will be undertaken that are designed to test hypotheses about the comparative advantages of judicial and parole systems for determining the lengths of prison sentences.
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From page 195... ...
Findings on the third and fourth questions are reviewed later in this chapter. Using parole guidelines, the Arthur D
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From page 196... ...
Compliance with Washington's first set of guidelines occurred in only about 30 percent of the cases, but those guidelines were later repealed and replaced with guidelines expressed in a different format; release dates were set within the new guidelines in 74 percent of cases (ADL, 1981c:14~. ADAPTIVE RESPONSES TO SENTENCING REFORMS Most sentencing innovations are designed to alter existing processes, procedures, or outcomes, and they generally originate outside the organizational contexts in which decisions are made in individual cases.
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From page 197... ...
. Both the interviews and the statistical analyses indicated that sentence bargaining was not replaced by charge bargaining or by forms of implicit plea bargaining.
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From page 198... ...
Although the number of evaluations of the impact of mandatory sentencing laws is too small and their quality too uneven to permit confident generalizations, the avoidance hypothesis appears to be confirmed by the few published evaluations. In Wayne County, Michigan, there is evidence from interviews and also from statistical analyses that efforts were made to prevent sympathetic defendants from being subject to mandatory imprisonment under the firearms law.
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From page 199... ...
In the evaluation of the mandatory sentencing provisions of the Rockefeller drug laws in New York (Joint Committee on New York Drug Law Evaluation, 1978) , there are also indications that cases were screened more carefully at early stages of the process after the law took effect.
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From page 200... ...
increased. As indicated in Figure ~1, without controlling for any variations in crime-type mix over time, a simple two-point comparison between 1976 before DSL and 1978 after DSL shows sharp increases in the proportion of early pleas entered at initial appearance among all guilty pleas in superior courts.
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From page 201... ...
a ·. \ 1 1 1 1 1968 1970 1972 1974 \ San Francisco,\ Santa Clarea ~ /j~ ~1 201 DS L I mplemsnted July 1, 1977 5a n Rernad; nca A \ 1 1 1 1 ~ ~ 1976 1 1977 1978 1979C 1980 YEAR FIGURE ~1 Trends in the timing of guilty pleas in California: percent of all superior court guilty pleas entered at initial appearance.
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From page 202... ...
For defendants with high criminal history scores, on the other hand, the proportion of charge reductions declined, and more cases resulted in convictions on the original aggravated robbery charge. This pattern suggests that prosecutors and judges were operating to preserve distinctions among cases on the basis of criminal history despite the explicit guidelines policy that prescribed prison terms for aggravated robbery cases.
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From page 203... ...
THE USE AND SEVERITY OF SANCTIONS Most sentencing innovations that affect the behavior of prosecutors and judges operate to make sentencing more predictable. If plea bargaining has been banned or regulated or if a case is subject to a mandatory sentence, statutory determinate sentencing, or presumptive sentencing guidelines, the parties can better predict the likely sentence than under indeterminate sentencing systems.
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From page 204... ...
However, there have been increases in the lengths of prison terms imposed for an intermediate category of offender who might or might not have been imprisoned before an innovation. New sentencing standards could also substantially affect the sentences of marginal offenders.
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From page 205... ...
data do not permit conclusions regarding changes in sanctions in Massachusetts. The substantial increase in the rate of appeals of lower court convictions suggests that the imposition of prison sentences increased substantially, but whether these sentences survived superior court processing is unknown.
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From page 206... ...
Under indeterminate sentencing laws, judges could not impose short prison sentences because all prison terms were for the statutory maximum sentence subject to earlier release at the parole agency's discretion. It was widely believed that judges were hesitant to imprison persons convicted of less serious crimes for fear that they might be kept in prison unduly long.
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From page 207... ...
to state prisons per 100,000 total resident population. 207 continuation of a preexisting trend toward increased prison use in California (Brewer et al., 1980; Casper et al., 1982; Ku, 1980; Lipson and Peterson, 1980)
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From page 208... ...
TABLE 4 6 Proportion of Convicted Offenders Sentenced to Prison in California Superior Courts Percentage to Prison Among Convictions Jurisdiction and Offense 1976 1978 (Before DSL) (After DSL)
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From page 209... ...
Increases in prison sentences among those convicted in superior courts also may have resulted from changes in the pretrial filtering process that
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From page 210... ...
If so, the increase in prison sentences for superior court cases would be more apparent than real: the cases sentenced to prison remain essentially unchanged, while more cases of moderate seriousness are eliminated from the available pool of convictions. (However, this would not explain the increases in the prison commitment rate per population.)
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From page 211... ...
and the California Bureau of Criminal Statistics on prison sentences do indicate a trend toward increased representation among prison commitments of the less serious offense of burglary. This apparent increase in burglars among prison commitments cannot be attributed to a shift in the seriousness mix for burglary offenders sent to prison (Utz, 1981~.
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From page 212... ...
A decrease in the variation or spread of prison terms was anticipated since an important goal of DSL was introduction of greater uniformity in sentences for offenders convicted of the same offense (Casper et al., 1982; Lipson and Peterson, 1980~. Length of Prison Terms Studies comparing the average length of terms under the old and new laws use both actual sentences imposed under DSL and adjusted DSL terms reflecting credits for jail time already served and/or good time off the sentence.5 These comparisons generally find decreases in mean or median time served under the new law, es5 Since most of the studies were undertaken in the first few years after ISLE implementation, the number of individuals sentenced and subsequently released under DSL is
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From page 213... ...
For burglary, both the mean time served from actual DSL sentences and the mean from adjusted DSL sentences are lower after DSL than the mean time served found for prisoners released under indeterminate sentencing laws. Different post-DSL changes in time served for men and women were observed as the substantial gap between men's and women's terms was closed under DSL (Brewer et al., 1980~; see Table ~7.
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From page 214... ...
In sum, despite the magnitude of the change in sentencing procedures under DSL, there is no compelling evidence of substantial changes in sentence outcomes attributable to DSL. While prison use increased and time served decreased after the new sentencing law, both changes represented continuations of trends that began several years before determinate sentencing was implemented.
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From page 215... ...
Table ~8 provides further evidence of the effectiveness of the guidelines in shifting prison sentences from property to person offenses. The proportion of low-history offenders convicted of serious offenses who were sentenced to prison increased sharply, from 45 to 77 percent after implementation of the guidelines, while the proportion of high-history offenders convicted of the least serious felonies who were sentenced to prison decreased from 53 to 16 percent (Knapp, 1982; Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines Commission, 1982~.
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From page 216... ...
As a minimum control for the potential influence of differences in the distribution of cases, departure rates were estimated separately among presumptive "ins" and presumptive "outs." As indicated in Table ~10, the differences across race and sex remain after minimally controlling for case distribution and the differences between employed and unemployed offenders are increased. TABLE ~8 Shift in Prison Sentences From Property to Persons Offenses Under Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines Percent of Cases Sentenced to State Prisons Cases Sentenced 1978 Under Offense Criminal Baseline Guidelines, 198 Severity Level History Score Cases 1981 VII, VIII, IX 0,1 45 77 (high)
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From page 217... ...
Based on this analysis, it appears that differences in case seriousness account for a large part of the differences found in departure rates by sex and raced The rate of severe departures for blacks relative to whites is, however, somewhat higher than expected and remains a matter of concern. PAROLE GUIDELINES Departure Rates As we noted earlier, evaluations of parole guidelines have noted departure rates that have varied from under 10 percent (Minnesota in 1979)
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From page 218... ...
b The departure rates by employment status are estimated from data on departure rates and the distribution of cases for different categories of offenders available from the Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines Commission. The figures estimated here are approximations based on estimates of both the number of departures and the total number of cases in each category.
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From page 219... ...
Thus it appears that well-managed parole guidelines systems can operate to reduce sentence disparity among persons imprisoned. Only one study has addressed the question of whether the overall severity of prison sentences served increased with the implementation of parole guidelines.
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From page 220... ...
The support for parole guidelines sometimes expressed by hearing examiners and parole board members, too, was not surprising, since the guidelines represent the policy of the board that initiated their development, can be changed by the board when guidelines and practice tend to diverge, and relieve individual members of some of the difficulties of decision making. Judges, who traditionally operate as independent agents relatively free of administratively imposed changes and organizational controls, have complied with new sentencing provisions only when changes have been mandated by statute, as in the instances of mandatory and determinate sentencing laws and statutory sentencing guidelines.
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From page 221... ...
In New York, for example, about 11 percent of those arrested on drug charges were imprisoned in both 1972 and the first half of 1976, but the number of drug arrests was much smaller in 1976 so that there were fewer prison sentences imposed overall. One of the goals of the sentencing reforms was the reduction of disparity in time served by like offenders with like cases.
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From page 222... ...
The possibility of delayed impact was strongly suggested both by the dramatic increase in early guilty-plea rates in California and under the New York drug laws, where median disposition times increased and conviction and imprisonment rates for drug felonies fell immediately after the law went into effect. A gradual increase of sanction rates in New York by 1976 and a drop in early guilty pleas in the second year under DSL in California suggest the need for more data points.
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From page 223... ...
The importance of changes in the filtering process is clearest in the evaluations of the New York drug laws (Joint Committee on New York Drug Law Evaluation, 1978) and the mandatory sentencing law for firearms violations in Detroit, Michigan (Heumann and Loftin, 1979~.
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From page 224... ...
224 RESEARCH ON SENTENCING: THE SEARCH FOR REFORM official records cannot adequately address the system impact of legal changes. Although statistical analyses are an important component of evaluation research, they must be augmented by extensive use of participant observation, systematic interviewing, and other qualitative methods.
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