Sentencing

Question

Summarize the article. Which type of crime prevention strategy is being addressed?
Identify the key findings and recommendations.

Answer

This article addresses the strategies that courts use to prevent crime, including the traditional activities of trials and sentencing and contemporary approaches that involve the use of domestic violence courts and drug courts. It also reviews theories that examine the effectiveness of courts in preventing crime, including deterrence theory, labelling theory, and rational choice theory. The article also explains the various ways in which traditional courts address the problem of crime. It also assesses the role of contemporary courts and the various approaches they use to fight crime. In the article, efforts have also been made to identify the effective approaches for preventing crime that are being used by the courts. The crime prevention strategy being addressed is the use of courts to find offenders factually guilty and to impose meaningful sanctions that can lead to crime prevention in future. The author argues that this strategy is not always effective because of the courtroom workgroup’s preoccupation with administrative goals.

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            From this analysis, findings suggest the main goal of the courtroom workgroup is not crime prevention but simple efficiency. Judges play the role of refereeing the process to ensure due process. In reality however, they play an administrative role of ensuring that the docket keeps moving. This duty is shared with the other workgroup members: the prosecutor and the defense attorney, hence the tendency for them to push for plea bargaining (Heydebrand & Seron, 1990). Moreover, there is a rigorous debate on the ability by courts to find offenders factually guilty and to impose meaningful sanctions that can lead to crime prevention in future (Neubauer & Fradella, 2014). It also emerges that punishment meted out by courts should ideally prevent crime but this does not always happen.

            Three recommendations are made from this analysis. First, contemporary approaches such as drug courts and domestic violence courts should be embraced more widely as a crime prevention strategy. Second, plea bargaining should be reevaluated to avoid situations where administrative goals are prioritized over justice-related and crime prevention goals. Third, the concept of re-integrative shaming should be embraced more widely in the U.S. criminal justice system with a view to strengthen the relationship between offenders and the community in terms of moral uprightness.

References

Heydebrand, W. & Seron, C. (1990). Rationalizing Justice: The Political Economy of Federal District Courts. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Neubauer, D. & Fradella, H. (2014). America’s Courts and the Criminal Justice System, Eleventh Edition. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.