{"title":"Nordic Sentencing","authors":"Tapio Lappi-Seppälä","doi":"10.1086/686040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/686040","url":null,"abstract":"Broad harmony and much commonality characterize the basic principles and core priorities of the sentencing systems of the four larger Nordic countries, notwithstanding rich diversity in details. Since 1960, there have been three distinctive phases in criminal justice policy and associated law reforms. A liberal period of “human and rational penal policy” from the late 1960s to early 1990s reformulated principles of penological thinking and resulted, among other things, in a radical reduction in the use of imprisonment in Finland. A second phase beginning in the mid-1990s, the “punitive turn—Nordic style,” with Sweden playing the central role, included a gradual politicization of criminal justice policy and intensification in penal control especially in relation to drugs, violence, and sexual offenses. Political and police trends in the 2000s have been somewhat contradictory but include success in controlling the use of imprisonment and expanding the use of community penalties. Imprisonment rates rose slightly in the late 1990s but since 2005 have been either stable or declining. There is rich diversity in details among the Nordic countries but also broad harmony in basic principles and priorities.","PeriodicalId":51456,"journal":{"name":"Crime and Justice-A Review of Research","volume":"45 1","pages":"17 - 82"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/686040","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60517718","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Differences in National Sentencing Systems and the Differences They Make","authors":"M. Tonry","doi":"10.1086/688454","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/688454","url":null,"abstract":"Structural differences in sentencing systems and normative differences in the nature and influence of prevailing conceptions of justice make huge differences in patterns and practices in Western countries. In most, the views of elected politicians, the media, and the general public are believed to be irrelevant to sentencing decisions; prosecutors are politically insulated career civil servants and do not engage in plea negotiations concerning sentencing or that constrain judges’ choices; judicial fact finding is required in every case involving a conviction; imprisonment is believed to be harmful and to be used only as a last resort; community punishments are widely used in lieu of imprisonment; laws mandating specific punishments for specific crimes do not exist; and proportionality is believed by officials and scholars to be the fundamental requirement of punitive justice. The United States, usually the only one, is the outlier on each of the characteristics.","PeriodicalId":51456,"journal":{"name":"Crime and Justice-A Review of Research","volume":"45 1","pages":"1 - 16"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/688454","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60599251","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sentencing and Penal Policies in Italy, 1985–2015: The Tale of a Troubled Country","authors":"A. Corda","doi":"10.1086/686042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/686042","url":null,"abstract":"Significant changes in Italian political, socioeconomic, and institutional contexts since 1985 have led to markedly harsher policies and laws. Sentencing law and penal policies have changed substantially. In the late 1980s, the legislature embraced rehabilitation in corrections and enacted a new Code of Criminal Procedure modeled on principles and values typical of adversarial legal systems. The demise in the early 1990s of the so-called First Republic due to the massive bribery scandal known as Mani Pulite (“Clean Hands”) profoundly affected the structure and functioning of the political system, perceptions of crime, and shaping of penal policies. Despite stable and declining crime rates, over time governments have enacted policies overrelying on criminal sanctions. Particular categories of offenders, undocumented immigrants and drug offenders, have been hit especially hard. Rapidly growing imprisonment rates produced overcrowding that was tackled mostly with alternatives to implementation of custodial sentences and pretrial detention. Persisting signs of punitive moderation for the most part are attributable to the inherent inefficiency of the criminal justice system, the “disintegration” of punishment at different stages of the process, and realpolitik policies adopted to address supranational concerns.","PeriodicalId":51456,"journal":{"name":"Crime and Justice-A Review of Research","volume":"45 1","pages":"107 - 173"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/686042","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60517544","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Weathering the Storm? Testing Long-Standing Canadian Sentencing Policy in the Twenty-First Century","authors":"A. Doob, C. Webster","doi":"10.1086/685755","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/685755","url":null,"abstract":"In contrast with many Western nations, the structure of Canadian sentencing and its overall effects on imprisonment did not change dramatically over the past century. To a large extent, Parliament left sentencing to judges. Broadly speaking, imprisonment was seen as a necessary evil to be used sparingly. Sentencing principles legislated in 1996 largely reflected the status quo. However, the period 2006–15 reflected a dramatic break. The Conservative government in power repeatedly attempted to restrict judicial discretion. Prison was touted as the solution to crime. Scores of politically motivated modifications were introduced to sentencing legislation. Perhaps surprisingly, few of these changes had large effects on large numbers of people. There were no appreciable changes to imprisonment rates by the time of the Conservatives’ electoral defeat in October 2015.","PeriodicalId":51456,"journal":{"name":"Crime and Justice-A Review of Research","volume":"45 1","pages":"359 - 418"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/685755","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60506663","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Equality and Human Dignity: The Missing Ingredients in American Sentencing","authors":"M. Tonry","doi":"10.1086/686256","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/686256","url":null,"abstract":"Concern for equality and human dignity is largely absent from American sentencing. Prison sentences are imposed much more often than in any other Western country. Prison terms are incomparably longer. The greater frequency of imprisonment is a product of punitive attitudes and politicization of crime control policies. The longer terms result partly from abolition of parole release in every jurisdiction for all or some inmates, but mostly from the proliferation since the mid-1980s of mandatory minimum, three-strikes, life without parole, and truth-in-sentencing laws. The ideas that offenders should be treated as equals and with concern and respect for their interests largely disappeared, though they had been animating values of earlier indeterminate and determinate sentencing systems. Their disregard is evident in the nature of contemporary laws but also in low-visibility policies and practices including the near absence of meaningful systems of appellate sentence review, low standards of proof at sentencing, and the absence of standards for sentencing of people convicted of multiple offenses at one time or over time.","PeriodicalId":51456,"journal":{"name":"Crime and Justice-A Review of Research","volume":"45 1","pages":"459 - 496"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/686256","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60522357","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Belgian Sentencing as a Bifurcated Practice?","authors":"Veerle Scheirs, K. Beyens, Sonja Snacken","doi":"10.1086/685756","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/685756","url":null,"abstract":"Belgian sentencing is in a period of turmoil. Belgian judges value their independence. Most believe in the desirability of individualized sentencing and resent intrusions on their autonomy. Although many continue to hold classsical views about the purposes of sentencing, new practices and laws, triggered partly by several decades of rising imprisonment rates and recent efforts by policy makers and correctional officials to contain it, have changed the penal landscape. The public prosecutor has increasing authority to divert cases from investigation and from sentencing judges, leading to de facto sentencing powers for prosecutors. Recent and upcoming innovations have created new freestanding sanctions of work penalties (often elsewhere called community service), electronic monitoring, and probation. A more fully bifurcated legal system is emerging with longer prison sentences for some offenses and offenders, including postprison preventive detention, and more community punishments aiming for a reduced use of imprisonment for others. Many judges are unconvinced though about the desirability of reduced imprisonment use for some convicted offenders. It remains to be seen what Belgian sentencing will look like when practices incorporating recent changes have stabilized.","PeriodicalId":51456,"journal":{"name":"Crime and Justice-A Review of Research","volume":"45 1","pages":"267 - 306"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/685756","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60506807","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"No News Is Good News: Criminal Sentencing in Germany since 2000","authors":"Thomas Weigend","doi":"10.1086/686041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/686041","url":null,"abstract":"Sentencing practice in Germany has long been stable, reflecting slightly falling crime rates. Public prosecutors dismiss the majority of cases that the police file with them as “cleared.” In a significant percentage of provable cases, prosecutors demand a penance payment of suspects in exchange for dismissal; many others are dismissed without any consequence for the suspect. Criminal courts dispose of more than half of cases in a written procedure, routinely accepting the sentence proposals of prosecutors. A growing number of trials result in “bargained” sentences, that is, sentences agreed on among the judge and the parties. Sentence severity in Germany is generally low. Life sentences are exceptional, and release on parole is available. Overall, only 5 percent of convicted offenders must serve a prison sentence. Another 12 percent receive a suspended prison sentence, and the rest are fined. German society at present does not appear to regard crime and criminal justice as pressing problems. Operating in the shadow of the public interest, agents of criminal justice can pursue a fairly liberal and rational course.","PeriodicalId":51456,"journal":{"name":"Crime and Justice-A Review of Research","volume":"45 1","pages":"83 - 106"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/686041","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60517484","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sentencing in Poland: Failed Attempts to Reduce Punitiveness","authors":"Krzysztof Krajewski","doi":"10.1086/685539","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/685539","url":null,"abstract":"Poland, like all central and eastern European communist countries, had notoriously harsh sentencing practices and high imprisonment rates, in sharp contrast to western Europe. After 25 years of political, economic, and social reforms, sentencing in Poland remains very different from patterns in western Europe. It is unclear whether that results from particularities of the transformation after 1990 or from shadows of the communist past and mentality. After 1989 substantial efforts were made to reduce punitiveness. A major liberalization took place in the early 1990s under the old communist penal code, the product primarily of changes in sentencing practice, and not in the law. Trends reversed after a new 1998 code took effect. Legislation meant to liberalize sentencing practice instead produced increased use of imprisonment. This resulted mainly from the changing political and social atmosphere. Imprisonment increased while sentencing policies became milder. This seems to result not from especially frequent use of imprisonment or harsh sentences but from abuse of sentencing the main alternative, the suspended sentence. It is imposed often, but is often revoked, with recipients ending up behind bars.","PeriodicalId":51456,"journal":{"name":"Crime and Justice-A Review of Research","volume":"45 1","pages":"175 - 219"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-06-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/685539","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60502113","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Understanding the Sentencing Process in France","authors":"J. Hodgson, Laurène Soubise","doi":"10.1086/685538","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/685538","url":null,"abstract":"French sentencing is characterized by broad judicial discretion and an ethos of individualized justice focused on rehabilitation. The aims are to prevent recidivism, and so protect the interests of society, while reintegrating the offender. By contrast, the political Right, characterized by the recent Sarkozy regime, favors deterrence through harsher penalties, minimum prison sentences, increased incarceration, and preventive detention of offenders considered dangerous. The sentencing process can be understood only within the broader context of inquisitorially rooted criminal procedure. The central part played by the prosecutor (including in case disposition through alternative sanctions) and her role in recommending sentences that the court almost invariably endorses, together with the unitary nature of the judicial profession, means that there is remarkable consistency in penalties imposed. The contrainte pénale, based on a reconsideration of the range of available penalties put forward by the Consensus Commission and legislated in 2014, is unlikely to have great impact without investment in the probation service and a change in the judicial culture that still favors simple sentencing options, including imprisonment, compared with alternatives now in place.","PeriodicalId":51456,"journal":{"name":"Crime and Justice-A Review of Research","volume":"45 1","pages":"221 - 265"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-06-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/685538","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60502103","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Evolution of Sentencing Policy and Practice in England and Wales, 2003–2015","authors":"Julian V. Roberts, A. Ashworth","doi":"10.1086/685754","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/685754","url":null,"abstract":"Sentencing in England and Wales has evolved in a direction apart from other common law countries. Although sentencing problems found in many Western nations are present, legislative and judicial responses have been very different. The use of custody rose steeply in the 1990s and has remained stable around that level in recent years. Crimes of violence and sexual aggression have, however, attracted increasingly longer sentences. The other principal changes are a steep increase in indeterminate sentence offenders, now accounting for some 19 percent of the prison population, and a striking rise in the volume of suspended sentences that has reduced the use of community sentences rather than terms of imprisonment. Net widening has therefore occurred. The principal distinction between England and most other jurisdictions is that statutorily binding guidelines now exist for both magistrates’ and higher courts. Unlike most US guidelines that assign offenses to levels of seriousness within a single sentencing grid, the English guidelines are offense specific. The Sentencing Council has also issued “generic” guidelines applying to all categories of offending. The guidelines have been evolving for over a decade now and cover most common offenses. Growing, but still limited, research suggests modest positive effects on consistency and proportionality in sentencing.","PeriodicalId":51456,"journal":{"name":"Crime and Justice-A Review of Research","volume":"45 1","pages":"307 - 358"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/685754","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60506511","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}