I. INTRODUCTION A. THE GOALS OF SENTENCING REFORM The sentencing reforms of the past twenty-five years have had several goals, including "truth in sentencing," control of prison populations, and reduction of unwarranted disparity. The first goal was easily achieved when parole was abolished and the sentence imposed became the sentence served. Control of prison populations proved more difficult, and careful evaluation is needed to determine whether sentencing reform helped to check, or may have accelerated, the steady rise in prison in
Issues concerning guidelines of competent practice unique to computerized test administration and interpretation are reviewed, along with recent efforts at formalizing guidelines in official professional standards. We discuss the problem of establishing validity and normative data for computerized tests, especially by demonstrating the equivalence of computerized and conventional administration, along with the literature investigating sources of nonequivalence. Practitioners are encouraged to familiarize themselves with this work so they can adequately review the appropriateness of a computerized report for any particular client. Finally, prospects are raised for creative development of entirely new kinds of tests and new models for representing individual differences.
Research Summary:
In United States v. Booker, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the federal sentencing guidelines must be considered advisory, rather than mandatory, if they are to remain constitutional under the Sixth Amendment. Since the decision, the U.S. Sentencing Commission has provided policy makers with accurate and current data on changes and continuity in federal sentencing practices. Unlike previous changes in legal doctrine, Booker immediately increased the rates of upward and downward departures from the guideline range. Government‐sponsored downward departures remain the leading category of outside–the‐range sentences. The rate of within‐range sentences, although lower than in the period immediately preceding Booker, remains near rates observed earlier in the guidelines era. Despite the increase in departures, average sentence lengths for the overall caseload remain stable, because of offsetting increases in the seriousness of the crimes being sentenced and in the severity of penalties for those crimes. Analyses of the reasons that judges reported for downward departures suggest that treatment of criminal history and offender characteristics are the two leading areas of dissatisfaction with the guidelines.
Policy Implications:
Assessment of changes in sentencing practices following Booker by different observers depends partly on competing institutional perspectives and on different degrees of trust in the judgment of judges, prosecutors, the Sentencing Commission, and Congress. No agreement on whether Booker has bettered or worsened the system can be achieved until agreement exists on priorities among the purposes of sentencing and the goals of sentencing reform. Both this lack of agreement and an absence of needed data make consensus on Booker's effects on important sentencing goals, such as reduction of unwarranted disparity, unlikely in the near future. Similarly, lack of baseline data before Booker on the effectiveness of federal sentencing at crime control makes before‐after comparisons impossible. Despite these limitations, research provides a sounder framework for policy making than do anecdotes or speculation and sets valuable empirical parameters for the federal sentencing policy debate.
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