Law Commons^™

Technology’S Influence On Federal Sentencing: Past, Present, And Future, Matthew G. Rowland

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

The comprehensive reforms that govern today’s federal sentencing processes were fashioned nearly forty years ago. Those reforms were designed to address concerns regarding the effectiveness, transparency, and fairness of the preexisting indeterminant sentencing system. Today, criticisms are mounting against the very reforms that were once held out to save the sentencing process. The more determinant system is being accused of being biased against minorities, overly harsh, and costly.

This Article explores how the criminal justice system might look to technology and build on the practical experience from the indeterminant and determinant systems. Tools such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help …

Supervised Release Is Not Parole, Jacob Schuman

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

The United States has the largest prison population in the developed world. Yet outside prisons, there are almost twice as many people serving terms of criminal supervision in the community— probation, parole, and supervised release. At the federal level, this “mass supervision” of convicted offenders began with the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, which abolished parole and created a harsher and more expansive system called supervised release. Last term in United States v. Haymond, the Supreme Court took a small step against mass supervision by striking down one provision of the supervised release statute as violating the right to …

The Case For A Federal Criminal Court System (And Sentencing Reform), Christopher Slobogin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In their article in this issue, Professors Peter Menell and Ryan Vacca describe a federal court docket that is overloaded and unable to process cases efficiently. As they depict it, justice in the federal courts is either delayed or denied, disparity in legal outcomes among circuits is increasing, and the Supreme Court is falling farther and farther behind in resolving circuit splits. While these problems have been around for a while, Menell and Vacca argue they are getting worse and will only continue to worsen if radical action is not taken. Their article provides enough of a factual record to …