Changing attitudes on sentencing
Beginning with the Quakers and lasting for much of this century, America's correctional policy was shaped around the belief that prisons existed primarily to "cure" and rehabilitate prisoners. As a result, courts, parole and correctional authorities had virtually unfettered control over how much time a person served in prison. The indeterminate sentencing system meant that courts used their discretion to assess a person's potential for rehabilitation and administered appropriate punishment; parole authorities used their discretion to evaluate the progress the person made; and correctional authorities dictated the amount of sentence reduction a person might receive due to "good" behavior while in prison.
Although indeterminate sentencing reflected America's traditional approach to punishment, it became subject to gradual but increasing criticism. Critics said that rehabilitation was difficult to accomplish and measure and that unfettered judicial discretion and parole actually made the problems of controlling crime worse. They argued that a system of determinate sentences would increase sentencing effectiveness by relying on specific predetermined standards to insure sentences are more certain, less disparate, and more appropriately punitive.8
In 1971, the National Commission on Reform of Federal Criminal Laws (the Brown Commission) issued a report calling attention to the need for more uniform federal sentencing policy.9 The Brown Commission found that Americans were frustrated by the indeterminate sentencing scheme and wanted "just deserts." In the midst of the debate, Federal District Judge Marvin Frankel outlined a seeming middle ground between indeterminate and determinate sentencing schemes, the sentencing guidelines. Judge Frankel's concept would be used 13 years later as the backbone for federal sentencing guidelines for all crimes.10