Keeping the streets safe: Truth in sentencing and public opinion in Idaho

Abstract

Criminal penalties in the United States are more severe in the 1990s than they have been at any other period in this century. Throughout our history there has been a swing between retribution and rehabilitation. In the late 18th century prisons began to replace corporal punishment. Initially, offenders were sentenced to prison for a fixed time, without any possibility of early release. In the early 19th century New York passed laws allowing time off for good behavior. The indeterminate sentencing model was adopted in the late 19th century. By the 1980s the notion that prisons could rehabilitate offenders was discredited and determinate sentencing, or “truth in sentencing”, was adopted by more and more states in an effort to increase public safety and to reduce discrepancy in sentencing (Edwards, 1995). The demand for this came from those in corrections, in the legal and justice fields and from political leaders.