The conscience and convenience of sentencing reform in Indiana

Abstract

AbstractOver the course of the past decade and a half, enormous energy and talent have been devoted to the issue of determinate sentencing. Yet today we know little about the values underlying this reform, and we know even less about the efficacy of determinate sentencing as a crime control policy. This article considers these issues in Indiana 10 years after the renovation of the state's Penal Code. Through a survey of state legislators, an examination of law, official statistics, and personal interview data, the analysis endeavors to understand the ideologies, pragmatics, and impacts of sentencing reform. It is suggested that the implementation of determinate sentencing represents a corruption of both good intentions (“conscience)” and policy objectives. Parenthetically, the article argues that the constructs known as the crime control model and the justice model both constitute a case of arid scholasticism. That is, sentencing reform can be more fully understood in terms of organizational “convenience”.