Sentences with phrase «harsh mandatory sentences»

Most alarmingly, harsh mandatory sentences pressure even innocent people to plead guilty to avoid long prison sentences.

Over the past few decades, as well, it appears that public opinion is shifting on the way we view crime and punishment as a society, seeming to favor rehabilitation over more punitive measures and harsh mandatory sentences.

Victim of the Drug War's harsh mandatory sentencing, as well as possible racial bias and entrapment, the onetime Rams star is 20 years into a 41 - year jail term.

Not exact matches

Obama's first attorney general, Eric Holder, set aside a criminal justice memo from his Republican predecessor, John Ashcroft, to charge people with the most serious, provable offenses and replaced it with his own policy of discouraging harsh mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent crime.

Was it overly harsh for federal prosecutors to seek (and win) long mandatory jail sentences for the father - and - son ranchers, Dwight and Steven Hammond, whose arson case supposedly inspired the refuge invasion?

The bill, which received Royal assent in March, includes new mandatory minimum sentences for various offences, the elimination of conditional sentences for some crimes, and harsher penalties for violent young offenders.

As a coalition of interveners in the Supreme Court of Canada case, R. v. Lloyd, we applaud the Court for recognizing that a mandatory minimum sentence (MMS) for certain drug offences is not only harsh and damaging, but also unconstitutional.

Sentencing is not only stricter, it also carries harsh mandatory minimum prison sentences and substantial fines.

Moreover, if defendants take those cases to trial, some judges are more likely to impose a harsher sentence, while others will still give the mandatory minimum (albeit rarely).

That prompted this lament from the majority, at paras. 11 - 2: «For reasons that were not explained, the Crown did not issue the mandatory notice to invoke the two year minimum provision in this case... A sentence harsher than that proposed by the Crown would have been fit.»

Another reason for the spike in Aboriginal incarceration is the harsh mandatory - minimum sentencing laws passed by Stephen Harper's conservative government over the past decade which increased sentences for a wide variety of crimes while limiting parole opportunities.

Bush has thrown a monkey - wrench in that and has also made it far more difficult for the administration to support mandatory minimums and harsh sentences in general, as well as made it difficult to argue that guidelines sentences are reasonable.

Both bills, in different ways and to different extents, would reduce mandatory minimums and expand judicial discretion, thus reducing unnecessarily harsh sentences and lessening unchecked prosecutorial power.

Mandatory minimums don't just ensure harsh, often disproportionate sentences.

The safety valve also restores a partial measure of judicial discretion, allowing a judge to sentence below a statutory mandatory minimum, should the judge believe the sentence is too harsh for the offense committed...

Conservative: Harper beefed up marijuana laws as part of the massive Safe Streets and Communities Act, a bill that imposed harsher sentences — and mandatory minimums — on marijuana traffickers.

Another 2011 study, on the sentencing of drunk drivers, found that harsher terms for first offenders had little bearing on whether they re-offended — a finding critics held to be contrary to the government's agenda of tougher sentencing through mandatory minimums and other measures.»

Harsher sentences and laws that strip judges of their ability to make the sentence fit the crime, such as mandatory sentencing, need to be changed.

Harsh prison sentences are routinely handed out as well as mandatory registration on the state's sex offender registry, which is available online and searchable by the public.