Defendants are regularly condemned to years, decades, or life in prison for minor infractions because of minimum sentencing statutes. If judges had more discretion in sentencing, then sentences could be more proportional to the crime, more specific to the individual defendant, and minimize the negative impact of minimum sentencing laws without inherently needing those laws repealed.
"SB 1393, also known as the Fair and Just Sentencing Reform Act, reinstates judicial discretion in applying five-year sentence enhancements for prior serious felonies to cases involving a defendant charged with a serious felony."
Park Labrea News
May 24, 2018
Read More"The California Senate today approved another moderate reform rooted in evidence-based policy and sensible cost-effective approaches to criminal justice. Specifically, Senate Bill 1393, the Fair and Just Sentencing Reform Act, would eliminate automatic penalties that have contributed to the state’s mass incarceration crisis and failed ‘tough on crime’ policies by returning discretion in sentencing of serious felonies to judges."
California State Senate
May 14, 2018
Read More"Attitudes of Americans toward incarceration have shifted dramatically since a generation of Republicans and Democrats enacted tough-on-crime policies at the state and federal levels in the 1980s and 1990s. Voters now demand more policies that give judges and the justice system more discretion to tailor punishments specifically to individual crimes and cases."
The Hill
February 11, 2018
Read More"Judicial discretion is necessary to the proper discharge of our Constitutional obligations as a separate – and independent – branch of government. Legislatures simply cannot write laws to address all situations which find their way into court or that develop as a case makes its way through the legal system. Judges are present during proceedings and hear the evidence firsthand. From this vantage point a judge must have some discretion to apply the law to the facts and procedure of the pending dispute."
The National Judicial College
May 21, 2015
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