Improving Judicial Administration Through Implementation of an Automated Sentencing Guidelines System
نویسندگان
چکیده
To ensure public trust and confidence, courts must routinely examine the management of their operations and continuously explore improvement opportunities. Although technology can be a catalyst for improving judicial administration, without the requisite planning, organizational capital (e.g., people, process, and system alignment), and evaluation it is unlikely that such initiatives will be sustained let alone succeed. In 2012, a local circuit court in Maryland implemented the Maryland Automated Guidelines System (MAGS) developed by the Maryland State Commission on Criminal Sentencing Policy to electronically initiate, complete, and submit sentencing guidelines worksheets. This study discusses the evaluation of MAGS implementation, highlighting the value of technology and monitoring as a means to enhance judicial administration.
منابع مشابه
Sentencing guidelines, judicial discretion and plea bargaining
The United States Sentencing Commission was created to develop federal sentencing guidelines, which restrict judicial discretion and were found to increase the average sentence length while leaving unchanged the likelihood of resolution through plea bargaining. A game theoretic model is developed in which a sentencing commission may impose guidelines or defer to judicial discretion; then a defe...
متن کاملHave Inter-Judge Sentencing Disparities Increased in an Advisory Guidelines Regime? Evidence from Booker
The Federal Sentencing Guidelines were promulgated in response to concerns of widespread disparities in sentencing. After almost two decades of determinate sentencing, the Guidelines were rendered advisory in United States v. Booker. How has greater judicial discretion affected interjudge disparities, or differences in sentencing outcomes that are attributable to the mere happenstance of the se...
متن کاملJudicial Attributes and Sentencing - Deviation Cases : Do Sex , Race , and Politics Matter ?
Most scholars focus on whether the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines effectively constrain judges or result in disparate decisions based on a court’s or defendant’s location. With few exceptions, studies of the effect of judicial attributes on federal-district-court-sentencing cases have been stymied by the United States Sentencing Commission’s refusal to release judges’ names in their databases of se...
متن کاملDiscontinuous Tradition of Sentencing Discretion: Koon's Failure to Recognize the Reshaping of Judicial Discretion under the Guidelines, The
Looked at from a general science of law, the effective individualizing agency in the administration of justice is discretion .... Discretion is an authority conferred by law to act in certain conditions or situations in accordance with an official's or an official agency's own considered judgment and conscience .'
متن کامل”Reasonably Predictable:” The Reluctance to Embrace Judicial Discretion for Substantial Assistance Procedures
In United States v. Booker, the Supreme Court held that the Federal Sentencing Guidelines are no longer mandatory, yet still instructed sentencing courts to continue to advise the Guidelines. In light of this expanded judicial discretion, post-Booker cooperation, or 5K1.1, motions made by the government are of particular interest because it can have the potential to increase the court’s power w...
متن کامل