Law Commons^™

Implementing A Presumption Against Imprisonment: How Scandinavian Sentencing Policies Could Be The Key To Ending Mass Incarceration In The United States, Cydney Carter

Lincoln Memorial University Law Review Archive

With the largest prison population in the world, the United States relies on incarceration more than most when it comes to sanctioning criminal offenders, but there must be another way. This paper will examine the sentencing policies and practices in the United States, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Norway. It will also compare these sentencing policies and their impact on incarceration rates suggest ways in which the Scandinavian sentencing practices could influence changes to the current Federal Sentencing Guidelines in order to combat mass incarceration in the United States.