Implementing Determinate Sentencing in Illinois: Conscience and Convenience

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Abstract
It is frequently asserted that criminal justice reform movements fail because the ideological model underlying the reform ('conscience") is corrupted by the politics and pragmatics in the system ("convenience"). Through a survey of the generalpublic and criminaljusticeparticipants in Illinois which measured the conscience that prevailedin the state during its sentencing reform, this premise is reconsidered. It is suggested that the specifics of the determinate sentencing law implemented in Illinois did not represent a corruption of conscience. Instead, it appears that the law, while shaped by the structure of interests in the state, also largely conformed to existing attitudes regarding criminal sanctioning. It is further argued that the combination of conscience and convenience dictated that neither a conservative nor a liberal model of determinate sentencing would befully instituted. In effect, a piecemeal reform was passed which promised to get tough on crime, but whose unanticipated consequences may prove troubling.

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