ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the question of whether sentencing should be discretionary, such that judges have the power to individualize sentences based on the facts of a particular case, or standardized, which would require judges to impose substantially similar sentences on defendants convicted of the same or similar crimes. For many years, sentencing in the United States was discretionary, which allowed judges to impose on defendants any sentence within a broad statutory range. The standardized sentences to which judges were bound to impose in all but the most extraordinary cases were merely the mathematical averages of the unprincipled sentences imposed in pre-Guidelines cases, rendering the guidelines’ sentences equally purposeless and arbitrary. Judges had nearly unfettered discretion to sentence a defendant to any term of imprisonment within a wide statutory range for a particular crime.
