The Issues, No. 40 - Judicial Sentences and Plea Bargaining

I think that the sentences that I read about in the newspaper oftentimes seem to make little sense. It seems to me that a person convicted of murder can sometimes get less of a sentence than a convicted burglar or a convicted rapist can get less of a sentence than a person convicted of possession of drugs. It all leads me to believe that the goal of the courts is not to administer justice but to clear the docket for the judges and reduce the population in our prisons.

From my limited experience visiting a courtroom, all of which has been in either traffic court or small claims court, there is a whole lot of deal making going on. I read also that there is a lot of deal making going on in the more serious cases as well. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that.

I don't like the idea of plea bargaining. If someone is suspected of committing a crime, they should, if found guilty in a court of law, be subject to the most severe penalty possible. In my mind the determination of their sentence should not involve a deal they have made to lessen the sentence. I don't think, for instance, a deal that is made to lessen a sentence if the accused agrees to provide additional evidence, lessens the severity of the crime the individual committed.

As I said in an earlier posting, the United States needs to get serious about dealing with convicted criminals. If judges dockets are overbooked we should hire more judges and maybe have trials around the clock in our courtrooms. If prisons are overcrowded, for the time being, we should build more prisons or expand the ones we have. Maybe we could take the gyms, the libraries, and the recreation lounges and convert them into cells. But the main thing we need to do is discourage crime by making sentences severe enough and making our prisons places that no one wants to go to by making them truly penal institutions where prisoners are punished and not pampered. If we get serious, maybe there will be less crime thus freeing up dockets and reducing the prison population. And, I don't believe plea bargaining will do anything to help in these endeavors.