In the long run, a flexible sentencing procedure which works to rehabilitate offenders offers the best hope in the majority of cases in the Federal courts.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I am deeply impressed with the gravity and wisdom with which most federal judges approach the responsibility of sentencing. It is a difficult, soul-searching task at best.
The purpose of the criminal justice system is both to rehabilitate and to punish. If we can rehabilitate somebody, that's a huge, huge win.
So what really works? Treatments in jail do some good, but it's mostly too late: finding a family and a job or just growing older make most prisoners eventually give up crime.
To change criminal justice policy in any meaningful way means to propose changing a very longstanding system. It's not realistic to think you can do it overnight.
We have initiated programs for re-entry offenders, since some 500,000 to 600,000 offenders will come out of prison each year for the next three or four years. We want to have positive alternatives when they come back to the community.
Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?
I believe, and I may be wrong, the system sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. Prison is supposed to rehabilitate, but they don't do that in a lot of cases.
The fact is that, in all prisons everywhere, cruelties on the one hand and injudicious laxity of discipline on the other have at times appeared and will, at intervals, be renewed except the most vigilant oversight is maintained.
I hope that a move toward clemency with Judge Afiuni would be a step towards the importance of maintaining a properly functioning justice system.
You pay a price when you have an objective sentencing system. That is, nothing is perfect.
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