Sentencing Reform

Currently, according to Harrison and Beck (2005), the federal prison system has been operating for a substantial amount of time with an overcrowding rate of about forty percent (As cited in Bosworth, 2010). Clearly, this number remains to be quite troublesome for many as it is often difficult to attribute what originally caused this pattern to begin. Both, the changes in the political climate and in American law during the 1980’s were the leading causes as to why, overcrowding, for example, continues to occur in our prison system today. As mentioned above, prior to 1980, the United States had seen a relatively stable incarceration rate, however, by the time the rates began to grow, the society of the nation had been subjected to a radical period of social and political change. President Ronald Reagan played a substantial role in the demise of rehabilitation practices, as once he declared the War on Drugs in 1982, it profoundly

Once the War on Drugs was announced under President Reagan’s administration, Congress had began to expand government by enacting new laws. For example, the newfound solution to indeterminate sentencing and most notable act to which had lead to the increase in imprisonment rates was the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 to which had the most dramatic and wide ranging effect. The Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 alone had prevented federal judges and many state judges from utilizing their discretion in determining their response to a case and were directed to use a mandatory sentencing guideline, which set out minimum sentences for all those who took part in the same crime (Bosworth, 2010). Unable to see such circumstances, this inevitably lead to hardened punitive practice, which resulted in the ending of parole in the federal system, increasing prison sentences overall, and requiring the offenders to serve out their entire