What Was the Goal of Determinate Sentencing and How Does

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• Determinate, or mandatory sentencing was intended to make sentences more uniform and unbiased, and thus reduce sentencing disparities based on race and gender. Only seriousness of the offense, prior criminal history, and some offense characteristics (e.g., the use of a gun) are supposed to dictate the length of sentence within a narrow sentencing range.
• Unfortunately, the downsides of determinate sentencing turned out to be too serious: its excessive rigidity, complex nature, and inability of judges to take some important characteristics of the defendant into account led to its repeal in the 2005 case of United States v. Booker.
• The three-strikes laws are an especially highly criticized version of mandatory sentencing because they are inefficient and very costly: Offenders are sent to prison at the end of their "crime careers," for longer than necessary periods of time, sometimes for trivial third offenses, and their imprisonment is much more expensive than some equally or more effective alternatives to incarceration.

What Was the Goal of Determinate Sentencing and How Does

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