Adverse Impacts on Offense-Based Proportionality and Prison-Use Priorities

This chapter shows how powerful criminal history enhancements undermine important goals of guidelines reforms. First, these enhancements undermine the goal of making punishment severity proportional to the seriousness of the offense for which the offender is being sentenced; if prior record receives more weight in sentencing, conviction offense seriousness receives less weight. Second, these enhancements counteract the goal of reserving expensive prison beds for offenders convicted of violent crimes—powerful criminal history enhancements shift the balance of prison admissions and inmate stocks toward property, drug, and other nonviolent offenders. Third, prior record enhancements change the composition of prison populations by risk level—older offenders often have more prior convictions but declining recidivism risks, so criminal history enhancements increase the number of aging, low-risk prison inmates. The formulaic nature of such enhancements also over-predicts the risk level of some younger offenders. The chapter concludes with proposals for limiting these adverse effects.