CRIMINAL SENTENCING

Criminal Sentencing



In common law's system, a defendant is sentenced after proving him or her guilty of committing a crime. The outcomes of a guilty plea or trial verdict, in common law may lead to sentencing. As for minor and insignificant offences, the punishment is given immediately after the conviction; whereas, in more severe and complex cases a judge usually sets a date for sentencing (Tony, 2006)

Criminal sentencing entails a number of complexities in the common law because it tales a great deal of time for a judge to decide the sentencing punshiment for the criminal offender.

There are for justification aims of criminal sentencing, which includes; incapacitation, deterrence, retribution and rehabilitation. It happens very rarely that a criminal sentencing is based on only one justification. Instead, these explanations are always in the backdrop, and explain the methods and forms of convictions which can be implemented. The purpose of the above mentioned forms of criminal sentencing are as follows:

Deterrence - The intention of the penalties which come under this label is to discourage the offender from getting involved in any criminal activities in the future. Moreover, it also aims to deter the general population from crime.

Neutralization - imprisonment eradicates individuals involved in violent crime away from the society and provides protection from other crimes. Neutralization is used in cases of severe offenses such as assault, murder or rape (Tony and Frase, 2001).

Rehabilitation - The rationale behind the penalties which comes under rehabilitation is to provide rehabilitation to criminal offenders so that a prudent integration of these people can be made back in to the society.

Retribution - Regardless of being a controversial justification, the punishments which come under retribution are justified as vengeance of the society against the criminal offenders.

A number of aspects are taken into consideration when judges decide to bring down a sentence to a criminal offender and these aspects are presented to a magistrate or a judge in the form of a report known as pre-sentence report.

Several other factors which contribute in making the sentencing phase more complex includes equity, severity of the crime, social debt, proportionality, offender's role in the crime and confession of accountability by the offender. However, these factors vary to a great extent based on the nature of the offense or the crime committed by the offender. In the forth-coming part of the paper we will have a look at the factors which judges consider while imposing sentences on offenders involved in identity theft for the purpose of monetary gains. Moreover, how the objectives of sentences will be incorporated in sentencing will also be discussed. In order to better understand the complexities involved in criminal sentencing, we must look into a particular crime. We will take the example of identity theft here.

Identity theft is taking place on a wide scale in the United States. In identity theft the offender illegally uses someone else's personal information so as to get credit or money.

Apart from critically assessing the necessary information from the pre-sentence report ...