{"id":85864,"date":"2018-03-31T18:59:24","date_gmt":"2018-03-31T22:59:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sentencing.net\/?p=85864"},"modified":"2019-11-06T10:55:59","modified_gmt":"2019-11-06T15:55:59","slug":"us-sentencing-guidelines-racial-injustice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sentencing.net\/sentencing\/us-sentencing-guidelines-racial-injustice","title":{"rendered":"The U.S. Sentencing Guidelines: Did Making Them Advisory Increase or Decrease Racial Injustice?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t
Any analysis of America\u2019s current criminal justice system leads to the conclusion that the racial bias present in our nation is present in our criminal justice system as well. Excising explicit or implicit racism from the system has been an ongoing project since the mid 20th<\/sup> century. The project has yet to be successful. Nearly 78% of federal defendants are non-White or Hispanic, and mandatory minimums are disproportionately charged against Black defendants. The U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, created in the 1980s by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, were meant to equalize sentences throughout the country.<\/p>\n
The ideal purpose of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines was to remove a certain amount of judicial discretion from the equation to minimize racial disparities in sentencing. Unfortunately, the intended goal was not achieved. Rather, we learned that the most problematic sources of unwarranted racial disparity today are mandatory minimums and prosecutorial discretion, not <\/em>judicial discretion. However, an ongoing debate has been raging with regard to whether the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines should be mandatory or advisory.<\/p>\n
U.S. Sentencing Guidelines: Once Mandatory, Now Advisory<\/h2>\n
U.S. Sentencing Guidelines<\/p><\/div>\n
To give a little context to the debate described above, the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines were initially intended to be mandatory. In fact, for approximately 20 years, federal courts throughout the country followed the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines as if they were mandatory.<\/p>\n
In 2005, however, the U.S. Supreme Court decided United States v. Booker<\/em>. In that decision, the Supreme Court reasoned that the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines could not be mandatory because it may result in a violation of a defendant\u2019s Sixth Amendment right to trial.<\/p>\n
In response to Booker<\/em>, the U.S. Sentencing Commission agreed that the Guidelines were advisory, and not mandatory. Making the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines advisory gave federal judges greater discretion at sentencing. Since that time, there has been some controversy over whether making the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines advisory resulted in a worse racial disparity problem than before.<\/p>\n
U.S. Sentencing Commission\u2019s Support for Making the Guidelines Mandatory Again<\/h2>\n
November 2017 brought us the third in three separate reports issued by the U.S. Sentencing Commission in which the Commission examined the correlation of demographic factors (notably, race) and the length of sentence in federal criminal cases since the 2005 Booker<\/em> decision. Check out the report by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n