Determinate Sentencing and the Epidemic of Biases in American Courts

Abstract

The 1984 Sentencing Reform Act was first put into place to direct court rulings and mitigate biases from the outcomes of sentences. By implementing universal responses to any given scenario, the ability to rule discretionally based on external factors was to be eliminated, designated to a relic of a past era. Unfortunately, the efforts were less than successful. Due in large part to the decisions made in the case United States vs. Booker in 2005, America has started its shift back to discretionary sentencing policies. The dissatisfaction with the outcomes of determinate sentencing was made clear, but the issues were not inherent with the guidelines as much as with the same issues which have plagued the country for over two centuries now. While failing to live up to its high expectations, determinate sentencing still manages to surpass discretionary sentencing measures by its structural simplicity, philosophies, and potential. In the United States, many disparities exist similarly outside of the judicial system, including wealth, race, sexual orientation, and gender disparities. With each of these segments of society, unique disproportionalities arise that have helped to highly benefit only small percentages of the community, creating a system that overall fails to reconcile and inevitably exacerbates many of the limited community resources and impacts of disparate treatment. This paper intends to display the fundamental failings of strict sentencing guidelines and purport that, while they have failed in living up to their expectations of eliminating structural inequality, the disparities exist not by failing to allow discretion, but by failing to limit these systems which perpetuate its existence.