Reason Magazine — Judges — Galsworthy Criminal Justice Reform Program

Galsworthy Criminal Justice Reform Program

Judges

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individual defendant, and minimize the negative impact of minimum sentencing laws without inherently needing those laws repealed.

Posts tagged Reason Magazine

Florida Passed A Hugely Important Amendment to Allow Lawmakers to Reduce Criminal Sentences

“Florida was the only state with a constitutional ban on reducing past criminal sentences, until Tuesday, when voters approved Amendment 11 by 62 percent, just over the 60 percent threshold for ballot measures in the state. The measure contained three bundled constitutional amendments, one of which repealed an 1885 provision in the Florida constitution known as the "Savings Clause" that banned the state legislature from making retroactive changes to criminal sentencing laws.“

Reason Magazine

November 9, 2018

SentencingPhillip ReevesNovember 9, 2018Reason Magazine, Florida, Amendment 11Comment

Very Broad Laws Offend Due Process

"As vague and ambiguous criminal statutes: they fail to give ordinary people "fair notice" of how the legal system is likely to respond to their conduct. This is a due process problem because it frustrates predictability. When people lack a meaningful sense of what conduct invites serious intrusion into their lives — either because criminal statutes fail to convey what conduct they prohibit, or because they sweep so broadly that no one has a clue what the "actual" prohibition is — the rule-of-law is undermined."

Reason Magazine

August 20, 2018

JudgesAnthony BradleyAugust 25, 2018Reason Magazine, Due Process

Judges

Galsworthy CJR Program

Info