Court Restores Sentencing Powers of Federal Judges

This is really great news!

Sentencing has always traditionally been a huge part of being a judge, and American jurisprudence has steadily been drifting away from that model to its detriment. It's to the point where today, in the most prosperous society in the history of man, we have the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. Maybe we're so prosperous because we're so strict and intolerant when it comes to prosecution and sentencing, but I have the sneaking suspicion that we're prosperous in spite of our incarceration rate, not because of it. Now, this Supreme Court ruling won't appreciably change the incarceration rate, but it could conceivably decrease our enormous prison population gradually over time as sentences are passed down by judges that are more lenient than "the guidelines" dictate.

--Tom

Comments

[Nato]

The problem is that this could interfere with the effectiveness of Incarcerex:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRPxN7DGy5c

[Nathan Smith]

It does seem that the rise in incarceration has reduced the crime rate over the past couple of decades. Whether that justifies it or not is hard to say.

[Tom]

How can the incarceration rate go up while the crime rate goes down? You can't (typically) get incarcerated unless a crime has been committed. Does that imply that there are just a few select people committing all of the crimes, ie repeat offenders? That's plausible, and I don't really have a problem with punishing repeat offenders harder than first-time offenders, but in general, I would say our sentencing has in many cases (mostly related to drug offenses) been overly strict.