CHAPTER TEN

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CHAPTER TEN

• PUNISHMENT AND SENTENCING

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Purpose of Punishment

• Middle Ages
• Torment the body for the sins of the soul
• As a lesson for the public
• Todayfocus on punishment and making the victim
  whole

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History of Punishment

• Early Greece and Rome
• Banishment and exile
• Who received physical punishment?
• Violence between 2 people was private
• Middle Ages
• Blood feuds
• Fines
• First use of term felony

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Common Law Punishment

• 11th century
• Physical torture
• Public spectacle
• 16th century
• Change in social conditions
• Offenders did hard labor
• Poor laws

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Rise of the Prison

• No longer needed laborers in the colonies
• Capital punishment frequently used
• Social philosophers spoke out
• Prisons began

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Goals of Modern Sentencing

• General deterrence
• Specific deterrence
• Incapacitation
• Retribution
• Rehabilitation
• Restitution

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Sentencing

• Imposed by the judge
• What are concurrent and consecutive?
• Indeterminate sentences
• Determinate sentences

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Sentencing Guidelines

• 17 states and federal courts have guidelines
• What are guidelines?
• Criticisms

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Mandatory Sentencing

• Types
• Require incarceration for specific crimes
• Exclude possibility for parole
• Impose minimum and maximum
• Habitual offender statutes

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Factors that Affect Sentencing

• Legitimate factors
• Offense severity
• Prior criminal record
• Use of violence
• Use of weapon
• Crime committed for money
• Extralegal factors
• Race
• Age
• Gender
• Income

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Factors

• Social class
• Lower classlonger sentence
• If poorcannot make bail
• Who represents the poor?
• Gender
• Chivalry hypothesis
• Women incarcerated less
• Women get more lenient pretrial release

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Factors

• Age
• More lenient toward elderly
• Harshest terms for 21-29 year olds
• Race
• African American
• 12 of population
• 42 of prison inmates
• Impact of war on drugs

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Race and the Cocaine Problem

• Federal law punishes possession of crack cocaine
  more severely than powder cocaine
• The 1996 amendment
• Political climate
• 300 crack cocaine 10,000 powder cocaine

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Three Strikes Youre Out

• What is a 3 strikes law?
• Reasons against it
• Aging out
• Extremely expensive
• Racial discrimination
• Risk to police officers
• Results
• U.S. Supreme Court case11/7/02

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Capital Punishment

• More than 14,500 since 1608
• Limited to 1st degree murder with aggravating
  circumstances
• Methods still in use
• Electric chair
• Gas chamber
• Firing squad
• Hanging
• Lethal injection
• Lethal injection is predominate method

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Arguments in Favor of Death Penalty

• Incapacitation
• Deterrent
• Morally correct
• Proportional
• Reflects public opinion
• Unlikely chance of error

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Arguments Against the Death Penalty

• Possibility of error
• Unfair use of discretion
• Vicious criminals often go free
• Misplaced vengeance
• No deterrent effect
• Hope of rehabilitation
• Racial bias
• Brutality
• Expense

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Legal Issues

• Furman v. Georgia
• Gregg v. Georgia
• McLesky v. Kemp
• Death qualified juries
• Does the death penalty deter murder?

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PUNISHMENT AND SENTENCING

• END CHAPTER TEN