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The article examines the creation and proliferation of sentencing commissions since the establishment of the first commissions in Minnesota and Pennsylvania in 1978. Topics discussed include nature of sentencing commissions, prevailing models in the U.S., England and other jurisdictions, and policy transfer or diffusion and the various frameworks used to describe and explain the process.

Sentencing guidelines were an exclusively American enterprise until recently. Since 2004, however, other countries have joined in. Contrasting approaches are exemplified by systems developed by the Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines Commission and the Sentencing Council of England and Wales. Minnesota's guidelines are set out in grids that categorize cases by offense and criminal history. Each cell sets out ranges of sentences that are presumed to be appropriate. The English guidelines are step-by-step decision trees, one for each principal offense category. Each jurisdiction created an approach that fits its sentencing environment. The Minnesota grids are more restrictive and generate high levels of judicial conformity and consistency. The English guidelines allow greater discretion, possibly at the cost of consistency. However, the English approach provides ampler guidance on use of different dispositions, sentencing of multiple crimes, appropriate reductions to reflect guilty pleas, and other subjects. Neither the Minnesota Commission nor the English Council has been particularly self-critical. Minnesota's main grid has changed little since 1980. England's guidelines have evolved considerably, but the council has ignored calls to play a more active role in controlling the use of custody and hence the size of the prison population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The consequences of a person’s prior crimes remain after the debt to society is paid and the sentence is discharged. While the practice of using prior convictions to enhance the severity of sentence imposed is universal, prior record enhancements (PREs) play a particularly important role in US sentencing, and especially in guidelines jurisdictions. In grid-based guidelines, criminal history constitutes one of the two dimensions of the grid. The enhancements are hard to justify. Retributive theories generally reject the use of robust, cumulative record-based enhancements. Research into recidivism suggests that the preventive benefits of PREs have been overstated. The public support the consideration of prior convictions at sentencing, but there is convincing evidence that people are less punitive in their views than are many US guideline schemes. PREs exacerbate racial disparities in prison admissions and populations, result in significant additional prison costs, undermine offense-based proportionality, and disrupt prison resource prioritization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sentencing guideline schemes require courts to sentence within the guidelines—or give reasons why a different sentence is appropriate. Most US schemes require courts to find ‘substantial and compelling’ grounds for departing from the guidelines. The duty of a court with respect to sentencing guidelines in England and Wales changed significantly in 2010 as a result of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009. This article explores the evolution of the duty of courts to comply with the English sentencing guidelines. As will be seen, the language of the duty of a court provision has become more robust: henceforth, courts ‘must follow’ definitive guidelines rather than merely ‘have regard to’ them. At the same time, the government significantly increased the range of sentence within which courts must sentence. The essay provides some international context, drawing upon experiences in the jurisdiction in which guidelines have been longest in existence, and explores the limited compliance statistics collected in England and Wales to date. The consequences of the latest changes for sentencing in England and Wales are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on the debate on the role and impact of victim impact statements (VIS) and family impact statements which continues in most common law jurisdictions. It argues that the main goal of ancillary harm should be to inform the courts on how serious the crime is to facilitate the determination of a more balanced sentence. It talks on the effect of VIS on sentence severity, restitution which is a particular sanction based on the concept of reparation, and limits to ancillary harm as aggravating factor. It explains reasonable foreseeability and inclination against cross-examination in accordance with the American law.

The article discusses Section 745.6 of the U.S. Criminal Code which is known as the "Faint Hope" clause. The author roughly explains that the "faint hope" clause allows people convicted of murder to apply for early release after serving 15 years in prison. He attempts to present a thorough, comprehensive analysis of the way the provision has functioned since its application in 1987. He also discusses the role of public opinion surveys on proposals to amend or repeal the clause such as Bill C-36 introduced by the federal government.

Crime victims play an increasingly important role in the criminal process. One manifestation of this is the proliferation in the use of victim impact statements at sentencing and parole hearings. Across the common-law world victims are allowed to submit an impact statement to a sentencing court or parole board. Many U.S. states go further and encourage (or allow) victims to recommend a specific sentence to the court or to express their views on the release of the offender on parole. Research into the use of impact evidence at sentencing suggests that victims can benefit from the experience, and most who submit impact statements affirm that they would do so again. However, few victims participate in impact statement regimes, which tend to be poorly administered. There is no systematic evidence that impact statements make sentencing harsher, and research suggests that victim impact evidence is perceived by judges to be beneficial to the sentencing process. There is less justification for allowing victim input at parole, as victims seldom possess information relevant to the parole decision. Victim input at corrections is an example of what has been termed "punitive victim rights" and is inconsistent with sound correctional principles or principles of fundamental justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on aggravating and mitigating factors at sentencing. According to it, the role of mitigating and aggravating factors under most U.S. sentencing guideline schemes is to justify the imposition of a sentence that is outside the range prescribed by the guidelines. It presents the benefits of a comprehensive sentencing guidance system for the exercise of discretion with respect to sentencing factors including the clarification of the different standard of proof for contested claims for mitigation and aggravation.

This paper reviews the evolution of penal policy in Canada in recent years. In many respects, Canada occupies a unique position with respect to criminal justice. The principal influence on penal policy development has been the United States, .yet at the same time developments in the United Kingdom have also been important. One result is that policy development in recent years has tended to follow a middle path between the more extreme and radical American route (that has given rise to policies suck as "three strikes" legislation) and the more conservative European reforms. Canada's policies with respect to punishment have been affected by a number of influences, including: the presence (advocacy groups; the reporting by the news media of high-profile tragedies such as the Montreal massacre of fourteen young women; the restrictions of budgetary constraints; and the intervention of several federal elections in which crime became an important electoral issue. In this respect, penal policy development in Canada echoes trends in other jurisdictions. The ,federal government, which is responsible ,for policy development (but not the administration of those policies) has attempted to pursue a dual-track policy. One branch of this policy has sought to reduce the use of imprisonment and thereby cut criminal justice expenditures. The other track has sought to placate public" and political pressure on the government by introducing more repressive penal policies, including severe minimum penalties and higher maximum penalties for young offenders. This paper reviews recent developments in the critical areas of sentencing and parole, and draws some general conclusions about criminal justice policy development in this country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the role of an offender's criminal history in the determination of sentencing. Countries where criminal record has vital role in sentencing; Conflicting views on recidivist premium; Relationship between prior conviction and current offense; Deficiencies of criminal history provisions in sentencing.

The author illustrates the dangers of routinely collecting and distributing race‐crime data by reviewing the US experience in the practice. He argues that ethnicity data should only be gathered periodically, and only by researchers like the Canadian Centre of Justice Statistics on a "special study" basis. Race, the author notes, is not the cause of crime, so the collection of such information will provide no direct remedy to solve a criminal problem. It is argued, therefore, that routine collection of crime data should focus more clearly on the collection of criminal justice statistics in order to better respond to crime. Roberts warns against the power of crime‐race statistics to misinform and distinguishes between crime statistics and arrest statistics. To address the potential danger of misusing data by linking crime to perceived race, proposed is a solution in which data would be studied and released by Statistics Canada. The study reports would include contextual information as well as discussion of the limitations of inferring relative participation rates in criminal activity. By weighing the benefits and costs of making such data available, and addressing the problem of classification, the author concludes that while information gathered by special studies is helpful in documenting discrimination, race/ethnicity data should not be collected in a routine manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Almost all legislative evaluations and impact analyses in the area of rape reform have involved the U.S. This article examines the effects of rape reform legislation introduced in Canada in 1983. In that year the offenses of rape and indecent assault were replaced with three new offenses of sexual assault. As in other jurisdictions in the U.S., the Canadian reforms were designed to achieve several aims. These included increasing the number of victims reporting to the police, reducing the proportion of reports classified by the police as "unfounded," and increasing the number of cases in which a charge is laid. This article presents a time-series analysis of reports of crimes of sexual aggression over a 10-year period around passage of the reform legislation. The results indicate that there was a significant increase in the number of reports of these crimes concurrent with the passage of the legislation. Moreover, the increase in sexual assault reports exceeds by a significant margin the increase in reports made of other personal injury offenses (e.g., assault). However, the legislation has had no discernible effect upon the immediate criminal justice response to reports of sexual aggression: Neither the percentage of reports classified as founded, nor the percentage of reported incidents resulting in the laying of a charge has changed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Opinion polls in Canada, the United States, Great Britain, Australia, and elsewhere suggest that most members of the public would like their criminal courts to be harsher. Does media coverage of criminal sentencing contribute to a preference for harsher sentencing? Most people derive their information about sentencing from the news media, and content analyses of news stories in Canada and the United States demonstrate that crimes of violence and sentences of imprisonment are overrepresented. Moreover, the news media provide little systematic information about the sentencing process or its underlying principles. This article reports the results of three studies examining the effects of media coverage on public opinion about sentencing. Subjects who read actual newspaper stories about sentencing that appeared in Canadian newspapers rated most reported sentences as too lenient. However, the specific account they read influenced their leniency judgments. Furthermore, in one experiment, participants assigned to read a newspaper account of a sentencing decision supported harsher sentences than participants who read a summary of actual court documents from the sentencing hearing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article focuses on capital punishment in the United States. The use of capital punishment continues to set the United States apart from most other member states of the United Nations. Moreover, the number of abolitionist states has increased significantly over the past decade. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the movement to abolish the death penalty in America has also gained ground. Calls for a moratorium on executions are becoming routine, and the news media regularly bring the issue of wrongful execution to the public's attention. The evolving debate about the future of capital punishment in the United States has stimulated renewed interest in and research on the views of the public. Public support for the death penalty appears to be waning. In October 2003, the percentage of respondents expressing support for the death penalty dropped below the two-thirds mark for the first time since 1981. Less than a decade ago, in 1995, four fifths of the public endorsed the death penalty. This decline in public support may reflect several factors, including a veritable collapse of public confidence in the relative deterrent advantage of capital punishment.

Objectives: This report presents state-level estimates of the percentage of adults and children living in households that did not have a landline telephone but did have at least one wireless telephone. National estimates for the 12-month time period from July 2009 through June 2010 indicate that 23.9% of adults and 27.5% of children were living in these wireless-only households. Estimates are also presented for selected U.S. counties and groups of counties, for other household telephone service use categories (e.g., those that had only landlines and those that had landlines yet received all or almost all calls on wireless telephones), and for 12-month time periods since January-December 2007., Methods: Small-area statistical modeling techniques were used to estimate the prevalence of adults and children living in households with various household telephone service types for 93 disjoint geographic areas that make up the entire United States. This modeling was based on January 2007-June 2010 data from the National Health Interview Survey, 2006-2009 data from the American Community Survey, and auxiliary information on the number of listed telephone lines per capita in 2007-2010., Results: The prevalence of wireless-only adults and children varied substantially across states. State-level estimates for July 2009-June 2010 ranged from 12.8% (Rhode Island and New Jersey) to 35.2% (Arkansas) of adults and from 12.6% (Connecticut and New Jersey) to 46.2% (Arkansas) of children. For adults, the magnitude of the increase from 2007 to 2010 was lowest in New Jersey (7.2 percentage points) and highest in Arkansas (14.5 percentage points).

Objectives: This report presents state-level estimates of the percentage of households that do not have a landline telephone, but do have at least one wireless telephone. These wireless-only households made up 14.7% of U.S. households in 2007. The report also presents state-level estimates of the percentage of adults living in wireless-only households. These wireless-only adults made up 13.6% of U.S. adults in 2007., Methods: A two-sample modeling strategy was used to estimate the prevalence of wireless-only households and adults by state. This modeling was based on data from the 2007 National Health Interview Survey and the 2008 Current Population Survey's Annual and Social Economic Supplement., Results: The results show that the prevalence of wireless-only households and adults in 2007 varied substantially across states. State-level estimates ranged from 5.1% (Vermont) to 26.2% (Oklahoma) of households and from 4.0% (Delaware) to 25.1% (Oklahoma) of adults. In addition, approximately one out of four adults (25.4%) living in the District of Columbia were wireless-only.

Unlabelled: The National Survey of Children with Special Health Care Needs revealed that 8.3% of children under 18 years of age were uninsured, a rate lower than the rate estimated by other national surveys. This report presents the results of an evaluation of the quality of this estimate, based on analyses of non-response, question design, interviewer and respondent effects, and the weighing and estimation process. National and State-level statistics on health insurance coverage for children with special health care needs (CSHCN) and for children without special needs are included in an appendix., Source of Data: The National Survey of CSHCN is a survey module of the State and Local Area Integrated Telephone Survey. This survey of parents and guardians collected health insurance coverage information for a national sample of 215, 162 children. Data were collected from October 2000 through April 2002., Results: Compared with other surveys, weighted data from the National Survey of CSHCN describe a population with a slightly larger proportion of Hispanic children and children from households with higher incomes. The National Survey of CSHCN was also the only survey to use a child-level design: A randomized experiment that varied the health insurance questions found that repeating the coverage questions for each child produced lower unisurance rates than household-level questions that first asked if anyone in the househol was insured., Conclusion: Question design differences explain much of the discrepancy between survey estimates of the uninsurance rate, but a definitive conclusion regarding the relative accuracy of the uninsurance rates is not possible.