Essay On Indeterminate Sentencing

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In the United States there are two types of sentencing a judge can give a person when they are proven guilty of a crime and these two sentencing are determinate and indeterminate. Now each one of these sentences are put in place in order to determine if a person is going to spend a few months or several months in prison or several years in prison. Now a determinate sentence is considered a type of sentence where an offender has received a fixed term in prison or jail and it cannot be changed by a parole board or any other agency but they can get out for earn time. Fortunately, this sentence gives the judge a mandatory minimum sentencing guideline where they can consider some individual circumstances. Unlike, determinate sentencing indeterminate …show more content…

Fuhrman illustrates a determinate sentencing structure because he was sentenced to a prison term of fifty-eight years to life which means he will not be getting out of prison early. Unfortunately, I feel that the case of Ewing v. California should have been an indeterminate sentencing because he committed a nonserious, nonviolent crime, but unfortunately under the Three Strike law of California he was sentenced to twenty-five years to life because he was a repeat offender. Unfortunately, determinate sentencing is the more serious sentencing of the two sentencing because with an indeterminate a person does not have to serve out their entire time. Therefore, a lot of states decided to go to a determinate sentencing structure rather than an indeterminate sentencing structure because when it came to the truth in sentencing laws indeterminate sentencing never truly represented the time a person would actually serve in jail or prison. Therefore, it was felt that they were not truly being punished for their crime because a lot were getting out of prison or jail early for good behavior and becoming repeat offenders. Furthermore, it was determined that depending upon the type of crime they committed for what kind of sentencing they would get because a lot of states still have both types of

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