Determinate Sentencing and the High Cost of Overblown Rhetoric: The New York Experience

Abstract

With the advent of the national movement for determinate sentencing in the 1970s and the development of sentencing guidelines, a century of sentencing stability in the United States came to an end. This article argues that the determinate model is theoretically flawed. Using data from New York State's sentencing guidelines committee, the article examines the negative consequences of casting complex public policies in vague generalizations. The weakness of the determinate model is discussed in three aspects of guideline development: discretion and departure policy, good time and prison guard power, and rehabilitation and sentence review.