First Thoughts about Second Look and Other Sentence Reduction Provisions of the Model Penal Code: Sentencing Revision
![handle is hein.journals/utol42 and id is 869 raw text is: ARTICLES
FIRST THOUGHTS ABOUT SECOND LOOK AND
OTHER SENTENCE REDUCTION PROVISIONS OF THE
MODEL PENAL CODE: SENTENCING REVISION
Margaret Colgate Love* and Cecelia Klingele**
INTRODUCTION
A FTER two decades of escalating prison populations,1 jurisdictions
throughout the country are beginning to experience the significant
ramifications of globally-unparalleled rates of confinement.2 The high cost of
incarceration, coupled with the disproportionate burden on minority
communities, has led many jurisdictions to question whether prison terms should
be so frequently and indiscriminately imposed, and whether they should be so
long. With the passage of time, criminal sentences often appear harsher than
necessary to justly punish or ensure public safety. The severity of American
prison sentences is magnified by the atrophy of back-end release mechanisms
like parole and clemency.3 In this way, long sentences are perceived to
undermine the very premise of modem sentencing theory and practice, which is
that an appropriate punishment can and should be imposed once and for all at
sentencing.
Margaret Colgate Love is an attorney in private practice and former U.S. Pardon Attorney
(1990-1997). She is also a member of the ALl Members Consultative Group for the Model Penal
Code Sentencing Revision.
- Cecelia Klingele is an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin Law
School. Both authors wish to thank the symposium editors and Kevin Reitz for their thoughtful
comments on earlier drafts of this Article.
1. See generally Franklin E Zimring, The Scale of Imprisonment in the United States:
Twentieth Century Patterns and Twenty-First Century Prospects, 100 J. CRIM. L. & CRIMINOLOGY
1225 (2010) (documenting escalation of U.S. prison population after 1975).
2. PEW CHARITABLE TRUSTS, PUBLIC SAFETY, PUBLIC SPENDING: FORECASTING AMERICAN'S
PRISON POPULATION 2007-2011, at 1 (2007).
3. See, e.g., Douglas Hay, Property, Authority and the Criminal Law, in DOUGLAS HAY ET
AL., ALBION'S FATAL TREE: CRIME AND SOCIETY IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ENGLAND 17, 44 (1975)
(Pardon moderated the barbarity of the criminal law in the interests of humanity. [Pardon] was
erratic and capricious, but a useful palliative until Parliament reformed the law in the nineteenth
century.).](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/utol42&div=38&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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First Thoughts about Second Look and Other Sentence Reduction Provisions of the Model Penal Code: Sentencing Revision
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