Ask Lemmy

Sentencing to long prison sentences should be avoided. There should be two general categories:

• danger to others
• not danger to others

In the danger case the sentenced should be kept imprisoned until proven safe, otherwise only a light deterrent is needed.

There isn't much difference in the deterrence between 1 year and 10 years for most people. The really violent crimes are committed either without regard for oneself, or as a part of organization that already has a support system inside the prison.

Mandatory minimums are a problem. Judges lose discretion to tailor the punishment to the specifics of the case. Minimums may be pushed unreasonably high so politicians can claim to be "tough on crime." (This happened big time in the US, starting with the War on Drugs in the 1970s and continuing through the 1990s.) Both of those lead to more people in prison longer than they should be.

Also, at least in the US, not all crimes carry mandatory minimum sentences. This gives prosecutors a new source of leverage:

The use of mandatory minimums effectively vests prosecutors with powerful sentencing discretion. The prosecutor controls the decision to charge a person with a mandatory-eligible crime and, in some states, the decision to apply the mandatory minimum to an eligible charge. Rather than eliminate discretion in sentencing, mandatory minimums therefore moved this power from judges to prosecutors. The threat of mandatory minimums also encourages defendants to plead to a different crime to avoid a stiff, mandatory sentence.

https://www.sentencingproject.org/fact-sheet/how-mandatory-minimums-perpetuate-mass-incarceration-and-what-to-do-about-it/

Mandatory minimums can also lead to significant racial disparities. The linked article cites an example of very different minimum sentences for different drug offenses, leading to a sharp rise in incarceration rates for blacks but much less so for whites.

Justice shouldn't he punitive, it should be rehabilitative. For that purpose, jail should only be used when there is no chance of rehabilitation and the person needs to be separated from society because they're a danger to society.

Crime motive is subjective, judges are subjective, justice is an ideal that is served by mins and maxes. I can’t fall on either side of the question totally but I do think objective punishments for objectively proven crimes seems more just.

There needs to be some parameters just to prevent someone from getting a slap on the wrist for a major crime or sent to the gulags for a minor offense.

Minimum sentences sounds like pretty bad. There is cases of legally wrong, morally right. Think about killing your violent spouse which while not being within the limit of self-defence is pretty different from killing your spouse. It's the job of criminal lawyer and prosecutors to come with reason to give a lighter/harder sentence and the judge job to listen to this arguments, compared with similar cases and sentence guideline to give the fairest sentence possible.

A person who seek therapy, pay penalties to the victim, has now a job, and already try to be a better person at the time of sentencing has nothing to do in jail

Minimums help the judges not only to decide the punishment, also to see in advance which crime is worse than the other crime. Maximums could maybe help in a similar way.

Maximums are needed when stark punishments exist, like torture, death penalty or removing of body parts. These can be limited to specific crimes then.

Court discretion, many factors may influence a sentence and if you don't trust the judge on that, I would say you have a much bigger problem in your hands.