Sentencing Rationales and Plea Bargaining Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Sentencing Rationales and Plea Bargaining - Essay Example One of the reasons why courts exist is to provide justice by ensuring that the punishment an offender is given is proportionate to the crime committed. After claims that unwarranted sentencing occurred in US, the congress decided to ensure justice by coming up with guidelines which were to be used by all courts when it came to criminal sentencing. The Sentencing Act was formulated and passed with the main aim of ensuring that unwarranted disparities which were thought to exist in the judicial systems were eliminated (Stith & Koh, 1993). Retribution which means offering sentencing criminals to serve punishments that are to some extent proportional to the crimes committed plays a major role in sentencing. This is because, the essence of judicial systems is to provide justice and justice means paying a price that is equivalent to the crime committed. The formulation of the criminal sentencing guidelines that have a table with ranges that people who have committed certain crimes should be sentenced clearly shows that retribution forms an extremely strong basis in sentencing. Based on the sentencing guidelines, the crime for which a person is convicted will always form the basic offense level with details of the case further determining the sentence by either subtracting or adding. The alteration in the sentence presented by the base offence depends on the role played by the person and the amount of damage that the person might have caused. For example a robbery will form the base offence with minor details such as whether the person used a gun or shot somebody adding to the sentence while a person who was involved in robbery with violence but played a minor role might end up getting le sser sentence than a person who will be judged to have played a vital role getting a tougher sentence (Stith & Koh, 1993). Plea bargaining is where the prosecutor and the defense counsel come to an