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August 17, 2003

Justice Kennedy Speaks Out Against Sentencing Guidelines

t r u t h o u t - Justice Kennedy Speaks Out Against Sentencing Guidelines

The New York Times

Tuesday 12 August 2003

We hope that both the members of Congress and the Bush administration were paying attention last weekend when Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, a tough-on-crime Reagan appointee, decried harsh and inflexible sentencing policies. Justice Kennedy was speaking for legal experts from across the political spectrum when he said the current rules misspent America's criminal justice resources by locking up people for irrationally long amounts of time.

The nation's inmate population reached 2.1 million, a record, last year. One major factor behind the increase has been the imposition of the mandatory minimum sentences contained in many federal laws, especially drug laws. A second reason for the rise is the effect of federal
sentencing guidelines, which were adopted in the mid-1980's to make criminal sentences in federal cases more uniform. These two measures have both pressured judges to give longer sentences than they otherwise would.

NYTimes original

Read It Rating: 5.5
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: .3
Learning Percentage: 10%

Posted by Lance Brown at August 17, 2003 02:37 AM | TrackBack
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