arbitrary disparities generated by indeterminate sentencing schemes. The conservative victory is often seen as a establishing a political context in which being on “tough crime” became the only viable electoral position. The involved an assault on the Right’s strategy rehabilitative ideal that exploited the perceived failures of the Civil Rights Movement (which was linked to urban riots) and the War on Poverty (which was sold as a crime control measure but failed to produce a short-term crime reduction) to claim that crime was a choice for which individuals were personally responsible. Robert Martinson’s 1974 study of penal rehabilitation, which concluded concluded that to reduce “nothing works” recidivism, resonated with the public, penal officials, and politicians who had come to accept the notion that blacks and the poor were prone to crime. Exemplifying the conservative logic was James Q. Wilson, whose attack on judicial leniency rang of bio-deterministic claims of incorrigibility. In Thinking About (1975), Wilson claimed that, people exist. Nothing avails them except to Crime “Wicked set them apart from The revised 1983 edition included a chapter on innocent people.” rehabilitation noting the abundance of studies that conclusions and validated Martinson’s arguing that the rehabilitative ideal rested on about “heroic assumptions” criminals’ reformability. He concluded that few offenders are truly amenable to reform and criticized indeterminate sentencing as naively preoccupied with rehabilitation. The emergence of mandatory sentencing schemes followed in the 1970s and 1980s given that, in the words of one US congressman, indeterminate sentencing was The Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 promulgated mandatory “widely discredited.” sentencing guidelines for federal judges that were, as one observer stated, oriented “more toward toughness rather than toward given how dramatically they increased fairness”
arbitrary disparities generated by indeterminate sentencing schemes. The conservative victory is often seen as a establishing a political context in which being “tough on crime” became the only viable electoral position. The Right’s strategy involved an assault on the rehabilitative ideal that exploited the perceived failures of the Civil Rights Movement (which was linked to urban riots) and the War on Poverty (which was sold as a crime control measure but failed to produce a short-term crime reduction) to claim that crime was a choice for which individuals were personally responsible. Robert Martinson’s 1974 study of penal rehabilitation, which concluded concluded that “nothing works” to reduce recidivism, resonated with the public, penal officials, and politicians who had come to accept the notion that blacks and the poor were prone to crime. Exemplifying the conservative logic was James Q. Wilson, whose attack on judicial leniency rang of bio-deterministic claims of incorrigibility. In Thinking About Crime (1975), Wilson claimed that, “Wicked people exist. Nothing avails them except to set them apart from innocent people.” The revised 1983 edition included a chapter on rehabilitation noting the abundance of studies that validated Martinson’s conclusions and arguing that the rehabilitative ideal rested on “heroic assumptions” about criminals’ reformability. He concluded that few offenders are truly amenable to reform and criticized indeterminate sentencing as naively preoccupied with rehabilitation. The emergence of mandatory sentencing schemes followed in the 1970s and 1980s given that, in the words of one US congressman, indeterminate sentencing was “widely discredited.” The Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 promulgated mandatory sentencing guidelines for federal judges that were, as one observer stated, oriented “more toward toughness rather than toward fairness” given how dramatically they increased
Grasso_WPSA%202016.docx