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The Future Of Sentencing Reform: Emerging Legal Issues In The Individualization Of Justice, John C. Coffee Jr.
The Future Of Sentencing Reform: Emerging Legal Issues In The Individualization Of Justice, John C. Coffee Jr.
Michigan Law Review
This article will focus on the mechanics of the individualization process: the manner in which dispositional information is collected, the quality of the resulting data, and the methodologies employed for its communication to and assessment by correctional decision makers. This focus is important because another distinctive feature of the American criminal justice system is the severity of the sentences it imposes. Not only is the average length of sentences imposed on American offenders far in excess of that imposed in other Western nations, but there is considerable evidence that the average length of sentences has increased in direct response to …
Standards For Accepting Guilty Pleas To Misdemeanor Charges, Richard A. Kopek
Standards For Accepting Guilty Pleas To Misdemeanor Charges, Richard A. Kopek
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
The guilty plea-not the trial-is the most common manner of disposing of criminal cases in America. It has been estimated that 90 percent of all convictions and 95 percent of misdemeanor convictions are the result of guilty pleas. Various reasons have been advanced to explain this heavy reliance on the guilty plea. For example, it avoids the drain on judicial resources that would occur if all cases had to be tried. In addition, it eliminates the risks and uncertainties of trials and permits flexibility in sentencing. Because of the prevalence of guilty pleas, there must be procedural safeguards to insure …