When you watch law shows or observe a proceeding in a court room you hear people being sentences to a certain amount of year in prison at the discresion of the judge and due to the severity of the crime. However, have you every wondered how those numbers are configured? With this idea in mind I search articles on the internet that discussed how sentencing works. On the website indicated below I found information on sentencing guidelines. One of the nice things about this website is that it is written for everyone to understand and uses terms in which everyone can interpret.
When reading through this article it identified five different categories that are taken into consideration when sentencing a criminal.
1. Offense level-level of seriousness
2. specific characteristics
3. adjustments/multiple court adjustments
4. acceptance of responsibility
5. criminal history
Offense level is based on a scale from 1-43. level 1 is the lowest and less serious of the crime and 43 is the most serious and most severe. This level serves as the base level predicting the amount of punishment that will be rewarding if found guilty. The next category is that of the specific characteristics. The specific characteristics are used in order to determine whether or not more levels should be added due to the severity of the specific crime. On the website they use the example of theft. Theft alone is a level seven crime resulting in 20 years or more. However, if there is $6,000 that the victim loss then the level increases by two, if the loss of the victim is $50,000 then the level jumps up by six. Robbery is another example used on the website. Robbery with a firearm is a level 20. If the firearm is shown to the victim during the crime the level increases by five, in the firearm is discharged during the crime then level increases by seven.
In addition to the characteristics, adjustments are also considered. These adjustments are at the discretion of the judge. There are three factors that influence adjustments; minimal level of participation-decreased 4 levels, vulnerability of the victim by age, physical or mental health-increases by two levels, obstruction of justice-increases by two levels. If there are multiple adjustments or crimes at hand then the baseline level is figured from the more severe of the two crimes; however, the judge can use discretion with this and lower the level if they feel the criminal accepts responsibility for the offense by admitting, restitution before there is a guilty verdict, or pleading guilty. This idea is most likely the driving force for interrogators in the criminal justice system that use these adjustments as a way to get people to release information to them by promising they will have a less sever punishment (when in reality it is up to the judge, not the criminal justice/FBI investigator. The last factor has to do with criminal history. How recent ones last conviction is on a scale from one to six can also produce a less severe punishment.
As one might guess after reading this article, there a lot more information that goes into sentencing than one internet webpage can offer, however, this is good website to get a general idea of how the process works.
http://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/federal-sentencing-guidelines.cfm
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