Testimony of James E. Felman on behalf of the American Bar Association before the United States Sentencing Commission UNITED for the hearing on Proposed Amendments to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines Regarding Alternatives to Incarceration, Washington, D.C., March 17, 2010
“The ABA strongly supports the Commissions proposals to expand the use of alternatives to incarceration. We are all familiar with the recent statistic that for the first time in our nations history, more than one in one-hundred of us are imprisoned. The United States now imprisons its citizens at a rate roughly five to eight times higher than the countries of Western Europe, and twelve times higher than Japan. Roughly one-quarter of all persons imprisoned in the entire world are imprisoned here in the United States. The Federal Sentencing scheme has contributed to these statistics. In the last 25 years since the advent of the Sentencing Guidelines and the mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses, the average federal sentence has roughly tripled in length.”
Sorry, comments are closed for this post.