Sentencing guidelines
Definition
Structured frameworks that recommend or mandate sentence ranges based on the severity of the offence and the offender's criminal history. They aim to reduce unwarranted disparity between cases. Examples include the US Federal Sentencing Guidelines (1987) and the guidelines issued by the UK Sentencing Council.
Related terms
- Collateral consequences
- The legal and social penalties that attach to a criminal conviction beyond the sentence itself, including loss of voting rights, ineligibility for...
- Justice reinvestment
- A policy strategy that proposes redirecting funds spent on incarceration toward community-based services, education, mental health treatment, and substance use programmes in...
- Mandatory minimum sentence
- A legislatively fixed minimum period of imprisonment that a judge must impose upon conviction for specified offences, regardless of individual circumstances. Mandatory...
- Mass incarceration
- The large-scale increase in the use of imprisonment, producing incarceration rates far above historical and international norms. Most closely associated with the...
- Recidivism
- The tendency of a person who has been convicted of a crime to reoffend. Measured differently across jurisdictions: by reconviction, by reincarceration,...
Explained in
- Sentencing, Prisons, and Mass IncarcerationStructured frameworks that recommend or mandate sentence ranges based on the severity of the offence and the offender's criminal history. They aim to reduce un...