This article summarizes and discusses attitudes toward sentencing issues gathered during telephone interviews with 124 Texas criminal court judges, district attorneys, probation chiefs, and defense lawyers. Important issues for local criminal justice officials included prison overcrowding; differences between the sentence given and time actually spent in prison; insufficient time served by repeat/serious offenders; and inconsistencies among sentences for the same crime. To varying degrees respondents supported different policy options including alternatives to prison, modifying the parole system, and mandatory sentencing guidelines.
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