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This book addresses the fundamental ethical and legal aspects, penal consequences, and social context arising from a citizen's acceptance of guilt. The focus is upon sentencing people who have pleaded guilty; in short, post-adjudication, rather than issues arising from discussions in the pretrial phase of the criminal process. The vast majority of defendants across all common law jurisdictions plead guilty and as a result receive a reduced sentence. Concessions by a defendant attract more lenient State punishment in all western legal systems. The concession is significant: At a stroke, a guilty plea relieves the State of the burden of proving the defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and in open court. Plea-based sentencing has become even more visible in recent years.The book provides insightful commentary on the following questions: - If an individual voluntarily accepts guilt, should the State receive this plea without further investigation or any disinterested adjudication?- Is it ethically acceptable to allow suspects and defendants, to self-convict in this manner, without independent confirmation and evidence to support a conviction? - If it is acceptable, what is the appropriate State response to such offenders?- If the defendant is detained pretrial, the ability to secure release in return for a plea may be particularly enticing. Might it be too enticing, resulting in wrongful convictions?

All modern sentencing systems, in the US and beyond, consider the offender's prior record to be an important determinant of the form and severity of punishment for subsequent offences. Repeat offenders receive harsher punishments than first offenders, and offenders with longer criminal records are punished more severely than those with shorter records. Yet the vast literature on sentencing policy, law, and practice has generally overlooked the issue of prior convictions, even though this is the most important sentencing factor after the seriousness of the crime. In Paying for the Past, Richard S. Frase and Julian V. Roberts provide a critical and systematic examination of current prior record enhancements under sentencing guidelines across the US. Drawing on empirical data and analyses of guidelines from a number of jurisdictions, they illustrate different approaches to prior record enhancements and the differing outcomes of those approaches. Roberts and Frase demonstrate that most prior record enhancements generate a range of adverse outcomes at sentencing. Further, the pervasive justifications for prior record enhancement, such as the repeat offender's assumed higher risk of reoffending or greater culpability, are uncertain and have rarely been subjected to critical appraisal. The punitive sentencing premiums for repeat offenders prescribed by US guidelines cannot be justified on grounds of prevention or retribution. Shining a light on a neglected but critically important topic, Paying for the Past examines the costs of prior record enhancements for repeat offenders and offers model guidelines to help reduce racial disparities and reallocate criminal justice resources for jurisdictions who use sentence enhancements.

Most people assume that criminal offenders have only been convicted of a single crime. However, in reality almost half of offenders stand to be sentenced for more than one crime. The high proportion of multiple crime offenders poses a number of practical and theoretical challenges for the criminal justice system. For instance, how should courts punish multiple offenders relative to individuals who have been sentenced for a single crime? How should they be punished relative to each other? Sentencing Multiple Crimes discusses these questions from the perspective of several legal theories. This volume considers questions such as the proportionality of the crimes committed, the temporal span between the crimes, and the relationship between theories about the punitive treatment of recidivists and multiple offenders. Contributors from around the world and in the fields of legal theory, philosophy, and psychology offer their perspectives to the volume. A comprehensive examination of the dynamics involved with sentencing multiple offenders has the potential to be a powerful tool for legal scholars and professionals, particularly given the practical importance of the topic and the relative dearth of research about punishment of multiple offense cases.

Should public opinion determine--or even influence--sentencing policy and practice? Should the punishment of criminal offenders reflect what the public regards as appropriate? These deceptively simple questions conceal complex theoretical and methodological challenges to the administration of punishment. In the West, politicians have often answered these questions in the affirmative; penal reforms have been justified with direct reference to the attitudes of the public. This is why the contention that politicians should bridge the gap between the public and criminal justice practice has widespread resonance. Criminal law scholars, for their part, have often been more reluctant to accept public input in penal practice, and some have even held that the idea of consulting public opinion constitutes a populist approach to punishment. The purpose of this book is to examine the moral significance of public opinion for penal theory and practice. For the first time in a single volume the editors, Jesper Ryberg and Julian V. Roberts, have assembled a number of respected criminologists, philosophers, and legal theorists to address the various aspects of why and how public opinion should be reflected in the way the criminal justice system deals with criminals. The chapters address the myriad complexities surrounding this issue by first weighing the justifications for incorporating public views into punishment practices and then considering the various ways this might be achieved through juries, prosecutors, restorative justice programs, and other means.

Although criminal justice systems vary greatly around the world, one theme has emerged in all western jurisdictions in recent years: a rise in both the rhetoric and practice of severe punishment at a time when public opinion has played a pivotal role in sentencing policy and reforms. Despite the differences among jurisdictions, startling commonalities exist among the five countries-the U.K., USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand--surveyed here. Drawing on the results of representative opinion surveys and other research tools the authors map public attitudes towards crime and punishment across countries and explore the congruence between public views and actual policies. Co-authored by four distinguished sentencing policy experts, Penal Populism and Public Opinion is a clarion call for limiting the influence of penal populism and instituting more informed, research- based sentencing policies across the western world.