Increasing the criminal penalties for people who have prior convictions in state and federal courts adds limited benefit to public safety, according to a recent study done by The Sentencing Project.
It was reported that a person’s previous criminal conviction is a component in the decision-making in each stage of the criminal legal process, which includes pre and post sentencing. For example, people with a criminal record are more likely to be booked after arrest compared to people with no record who were arrested for the same offense.
“Lawmakers and court practitioners often use criminal histories as a basis for requiring pretrial detention and risk assessment instruments used to determine pretrial release include prior convictions when calculating risk scores and making detention decisions,” The Sentencing Project reported.
People who have a history of criminal convictions are often subjected to having their sentences increased in state and federal courts, The Sentencing Project found. Sentencing recommendations, sentencing laws, and the discretion of prosecutors and judges are ways in which a person’s criminal record increases criminal penalties imposed on them.
The report stated, “In 12 states, Washington, DC, and the federal system, sentencing guidelines include sentencing grids that recommend or require the type and duration of sentences based on two key factors: the seriousness of the offense that a person was convicted of, and their criminal record.”
“In addition to sentencing guidelines, many state and federal laws also explicitly require longer sentences for people with prior convictions. For example: California’s Three Strikes Law doubles prison sentences for a second ‘strikeable’ offense and mandates parole-eligible life sentences for a third,” The Sentencing Project reported.
In addition, it was reported that some federal laws require a mandatory life without parole sentence for certain repeat serious convictions.
Sentences that impose prison time are typically based on the severity of a criminal offense, and on a person’s criminal record, or “rap sheet,” which is essentially an index of one’s accumulated convictions.
“African Americans are disproportionately impacted when criminal records lengthen sentences,” The Sentencing Project reported. “Across the four states studied here, among persons sentenced to 10 years or longer, African Americans had criminal record scores — representing both length of history and offense severity — that were 26% higher than whites.”
The imbalance was a factor to African Americans receiving significantly longer sentences, according to The Sentencing Project. “Among people with sentences of 10 years or longer, African Americans averaged 31 years and seven months, while white individuals were sentenced to an average of 26 years and four months.”
The Sentencing Project report stated that imposing harsher punishment on people because of their criminal record is “problematic because it increases the harms of incarceration while producing limited contributions to community safety — and these harms disproportionately impact African Americans.”
The report addressed what it deemed the “broader issue [of] the unquestioned inclusion of prior drug convictions in criminal record scores.” It noted the “well-documented racial disparities in drug law enforcement.”
“Surveys by federal agencies show that both recently and historically, whites and African Americans have used illicit drugs at roughly similar rates,” The Sentencing Project reported.
For sentences that are more than 10 years, The Sentencing Project recommended “criminal records should account for no more than 10% of sentence lengths.”
The report concluded that those who follow the practice of using a person’s criminal record to lengthen their sentence should take such measures with caution and investigate whether the main goal of increasing public safety is actually being reached.