Criminal
Mar. 4, 2021
Renewed focus on rehabilitation in state criminal proceedings
During the so-called “tough on crime” era, the pendulum in California sentencing swung heavily in favor of prioritizing punishment and incapacitation, leading to long prison sentences. This focus necessarily resulted in a lack of resources directed at offender rehabilitation. Several newly enacted statutes, combined with the policies of newly elected Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón may signal a shift away from punishment and toward rehabilitation as a priority in criminal sentencing.
Criminal sentencing has traditionally been thought of as serving four related, but distinct, purposes: punishment, through which society expresses its disapproval of the defendant's conduct; incapacitation, through which a defendant is removed from society for a period of time and therefore prevented from committing additional offenses; deterrence, through which both the defendant and others are discouraged from breaking the law; and rehabilitation, through which a de...
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