Research Paper on:
Sentencing That is Indeterminate v. Determinate

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
they have moved on to "prescription." She said that matter of factly, as if what they had done was not illegal and also, what they are doing now is also  perfectly all right. And in the scheme of things, what are they doing wrong? Millions of people are on Prozac, Valium, Paxil or Zoloft. If a college student wants to  smoke a marijuana joint, or snort cocaine, why should that act ruin the rest of his life? With mandatory sentencing for drug offenders, a simple drug taking, or drug selling,  episode can ruin the life of a young person. For other types of crime, whether or not the state has determinate and indeterminate sentencing guidelines will also dictate how  long an individual will spend in prison. Although those who advocate determinate sentencing guidelines mean well as it is equated with a tougher stance on crime, the truth is that  such stringent requirements tie the hands of judges and make fair sentencing impossible. Steinberg (1994) reported in Rolling Stone that Compulsory drug sentencing had been kept alive by fear mongering.  After the creation of the first set of harsh mandatory-drug-sentencing laws, and the infamous Boggs Act during the fifties, Congress elected mandatory minimums with the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of  1984 (1994). Since that time, stiffening or adding to mandatory minimums has been a kind of election-year ritual, and the Anti-Drug Abuse Acts of 1986 and 1988 and the 1990  crime bill are examples of that (1994). Of course, the implementation of mandatory sentencing guidelines is not an idea peculiar to drugs, but that is what has received a lot  of attention. Why? Drug use is essentially a victimless crime, even though the War on Drug campaign would argue the opposite. Still, it is expected that college students, and