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1 Lawrence A. Greenfeld, Prison Sentences and Time Served for Violence 1 (1995)

handle is hein.death/pstiv0001 and id is 1 raw text is: U.S. Department of Justice \Office of Justice Programs 1-i BrauoJutc atitc Seece FidVg, ubr Prison Sentences and April 1995, NCJ-153858 Time Served for Violence By Lawrence A. Greenfeld BJS Statistician Since the mid-1 970's, legislatures around the Nation have sought to reduce discretion in both the sentencing process and the determination of when the conditions of a sentence have been satisfied. Determinate sentencing, use of man- datory minimums, and guidelines-based sentencing are il- lustrations of approaches that limit discretion and increase the predictability of penalties. A majority of State prisoners today serve presumptive sen- tences - 90% of State inmates can estimate their prob- able release date, and their discharge from prison is less likely than in the past to be determined by a parole board decision. In 1977, 72% of those released from State pris- ons had served an indeterminate sentence, and a parole board decided their release. In 1992, by contrast, less than 40% of prison releases were determined by a parole board. Interest in truth-in-sentencing reflects continued attention to discretion and to the relation between sentences and time served. Truth-in-sentencing is generally meant to describe a close correspondence between the sentence imposed upon those sent to prison and the time actually served prior to prison release. Data collected from States by the Bureau of Justice Statis- tics (BJS) indicate that violent offenders released from State prisons in 1992 served 48% of the sentence they had received - an average of 43 months in confinement, both jail and prison, on an average sentence of 89 months. The Violent offenders are persons convicted of homicide, kidnaping, forcible rape, sexual assault, robbery, assault, or other crimes involving the threat or imposition of harm upon the victim, in- cluding extortion, intimidation, reckless endangerment, hit-and- run driving with injury, or child abuse. finding that just under half the sentence will be served in confinement was confirmed through analysis of self-reports of a national sample of State prisoners. An examination of prison release practices for violent offenders in 31 States reveals wide disparity across the States in sentence length but substantially less disparity and greater consensus on the duration of time spent in confinement. These findings are drawn from BJS data collection pro- grams, including the annual National Corrections Reporting Program (NCRP) and the 1991 sample survey of State prisoners. (See Sources of data, page 3.) Admissions, releases, and prisoners present Prison releases Participating NCRP States, representing about 8 out of 10 violent offenders released from prisons nationwide in 1992, provided sufficient information to examine the relationship between the sentence received and time served prior to first release. Released violent offenders In 1992 served 48% of their sentence Average Percent of Average time sentence Type of offense sentence served* served All violent 89 months 43 months 48% Homicide 149 71 48 Rape 117 65 56 Kidnaping 104 52 50 Robbery 95 44 46 Sexual assault 72 35 49 Assault 61 29 48 Other 60 28 47 *Includes jail credit and prison time. 0

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