Mandatory sentencing

An Apprehended Domestic Violence Order (ADVO) reflects the community’s expectation that the State will care and protect child. However the enforceability of ADVOs is limited because it relies upon resource efficiency in the executive powers and the compliance of violent perpetrator. An ADVO is made under the Crimes (Domestic and Personal Violence) Act 2007(NSW). Family violence is defined by the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth)(FLA) as ‘violent, threatening or other behaviour by a person that coerces…

In the Supreme Court case, Roper v Simmons, the justices argued at what age does a person become culpable for their crimes and should receive adult punishments. The respondent, Christopher Simmons, was 17 years old when he and a friend broke into a woman’s home, robbed and tortured her, then killed her by throwing her off a bridge. After being convicted of the crime, Simmons was sentenced to the death penalty, which he eventually revoked. When the case made it to the Supreme Court in 2004, the…

Incapacitation has two forms, collective incapacitation and selective incapacitation. Collective incapacitation means the mandatory same sentence for the crime regardless of the individual. With collective incapacitation the costs outweigh the benefits, meaning that you would have more people in prison raising the cost to hold them. Selective incapacitation focuses on high risk…

It’s a cold, dark, night in New York City when few people brave the dimly lit back alleys. One man, however ventures into the darkness. In tattered clothes that barely cover his shivering frame, the lone man uses the dark and seclusion of the alley to shoot up heroin. The familiar warm feeling soothes his aching body, it brushes the pain and the cold away as if he were waking from an unpleasant dream. He needs more, more warmth, more comfort, and more forgetfulness. The enveloping, pleasant,…

attributions to the disparity is the so called “War on Drugs” and the harsher punishment for African Americans when sentencing cocaine and crack crimes. Cocaine is usually found in White communities and carries a mandatory five years sentence if found in possession of 500 grams, whereas crack is mainly found in African American communities because it is cheaper. Crack carries a five mandatory five years sentence if found in possession of five grams. The issue with this law is, Cocaine and Crack…

Hispanics. A study conducted by the Human Rights Watch in 2000 noted that blacks comprise 62.7% and whites 36.7% of all drug offenders sent to state prisons. Most of it was due to the fact that the possession of 5 grams of crack-cocaine comes with a mandatory minimum sentence of 5 years, while it takes more than a pound of pure cocaine to get a five year sentence. Crack-cocaine and pure cocaine are chemically the same, but crack is the cheaper version of the two but it has flooded the poor…

Sentencing policies such as the mandatory minimum sentences and the war on drugs initiative have played a great part of the women in prison. These initiative were initiated to reduce sentencing disparities, instead it has played a great effect of an increase in women imprisonment. The rise in the female prison meant that many facilities that were…

The purpose of this paper is to analyze and discuss issues with the three strikes law. There are many issues, but for the purpose of this paper, four issues were analyzed and discussed. They are; [1] prison overcrowding, [2] cost, [3] fairness of sentencing, and [4] deterrence. The three strikes law was enacted in 1994 and has made some impact on crime and the way the criminal justice agencies relate to that impact. The three strikes law has both a good and bad impact on the criminal justice…

primary presidential candidates voice their view on criminal reform support the REDEEM and Justice Safety Valve Acts. These acts remove records of non-violent offences on the federal level of juveniles under 15 and allow judges to regulate the minimum mandatory sentence of non-violent offenders to their best interest. Anti-reformists contend that laws exist to maintain order in society, with punishment being the main—if not only – factor that preserves the effectivity of the legal system.…

In the past, juvenile offenders were held to the same standards and sanctions as adult offenders. The history of juvenile offenders can be set back to the middle ages era. There were many different methods on how the law dealt with juvenile offenders within this time period that are consider unethical today. In this time, state decided to just let the parents deal with this delinquency behavior. In a primitive age of children law, there were no real methods on how to adjudicate juvenile…