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
What about unjustly light sentences though? Like a sex criminal who is let off easy because he’s white, has rich parents and was on track to get a high paying career?
Then the prosecution brings case law where a person of color in a similar situation got a very different sentence, or someone without the rich parents etc.
I’m sure there’ll be biases but minimum sentences won’t undo those. I’d find minimum and maximum sentences very unfair for situations like described by the person you replied to. Case law and perhaps a blinding system (Justice is blindfolded after all) where at least one of the judges involved doesn’t get to learn things like “white guy with rich parents” might be a better solution if that’s the problem this is intended to solve
I’m not deep into this situation but my understanding is that no minimum sentence would have helped there. Nobody being above the law might have helped…
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
What about unjustly light sentences though? Like a sex criminal who is let off easy because he’s white, has rich parents and was on track to get a high paying career?
Then the prosecution brings case law where a person of color in a similar situation got a very different sentence, or someone without the rich parents etc.
I’m sure there’ll be biases but minimum sentences won’t undo those. I’d find minimum and maximum sentences very unfair for situations like described by the person you replied to. Case law and perhaps a blinding system (Justice is blindfolded after all) where at least one of the judges involved doesn’t get to learn things like “white guy with rich parents” might be a better solution if that’s the problem this is intended to solve
Or someone can just skip prison and become leader of the country instead ahem USA ahem
I’m not deep into this situation but my understanding is that no minimum sentence would have helped there. Nobody being above the law might have helped…