Why Does the US Sentence People to Hundreds of Years in Prison?

Date

2019-7-22

Website

Some may wonder about the point of a centuries-long sentence – far longer than a human could serve.

As a criminal justice scholar and formerly an attorney in state criminal courts, I see their purpose as entirely symbolic.

A 400-year sentence doesn’t prevent the possibility of the defendant being released on parole. However, Virginia abolished parole in 1995. About 20 states have abolished parole for some or all offenses.

Citation

Darryl K. Brown, Why Does the US Sentence People to Hundreds of Years in Prison?, Conversation (July 22, 2019).

UVA Law Faculty Affiliations

Darryl K. Brown

Center for Criminal Justice

Center for the Study of Race and Law

More in This Category

Under Their Eye: The Surveilled Student

Danielle K. Citron

We live in a golden age of student surveillance. Some surveillance is old school: video cameras, school resource officers, and tip lines. Old-school...

The Counterintuitive Consequences of Sex Offender Risk Assessment at Sentencing

Megan T. Stevenson

Jennifer L. Doleac

Virginia adopted a risk assessment to help determine sentencing for sex offenders. It was incorporated as a one-way ratchet toward higher sentences...

Big Data and Compounding Injustice

Deborah Hellman

This article argues that the fact that an action will compound a prior injustice counts as a reason against doing the action. I call this reason The...

Trump out on bail – a criminal justice expert explains the system of cash bail

Megan T. Stevenson

For several days, former President Donald Trump and his 18 co-defendants in a Georgia election interference case trickled into the Fulton County Jail...

The One Remaining Identity the Supreme Court Is Willing to Protect

Craig Konnoth

There is one group that the court does not put into an identity straitjacket—those claiming religious exemptions.

Bad Faith Prosecution

Ann Woolhandler

Michael G. Collins

Jonathan Remy Nash

In our increasingly polarized society, claims that prosecutions are politically motivated, racially motivated, or just plain arbitrary are more common...

Introduction: The Nature of the Judicial Process at 100

Charles Barzun

John C.P. Goldberg

This special issue of the Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities contains papers presented at a March 2022 conference at Yale Law School marking the...

Precedent and Similarity

Frederick Schauer

Barbara A. Spellman

Given that no two acts, events, situations, and legal cases are identical, precedential constraint necessarily involves determining which two...

Law and Orders

Rachel Harmon

Coercive policing is conducted mostly by means of commands, and officers usually cannot use force unless they have ﬁrst issued an order. Yet, despite...

Addressing the School-to-Prison Pipeline Through Three Nontraditional Pathways

Gerard Robinson

He who opens a school door, closes a prison. – Victor Hugo Analogous to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s critique of his leaders’ decision to use punishment as a...

The Work of the American Law Institute in Historical Context

Kenneth S. Abraham

G. Edward White

This chapter examines the intellectual and social contexts in which the American Law Institute (ALI) has operated and how they have influenced the...

Error Aversions and Due Process

Gregory Mitchell

Brandon L. Garrett

William Blackstone famously expressed the view that convicting the innocent constitutes a much more serious error than acquitting the guilty. This...

Alzheimer’s, Advance Directives, and Interpretive Authority

Charles Barzun

Philosophers have debated whether the advance directives of Alzheimer’s patients should be enforced, even if patients seem content in their demented...

Taking Experience Seriously: A Comment on Professor Zipursky’s “Benjamin Cardozo and American Natural Law Theory”

Charles Barzun

This short essay considers Benjamin Zipursky’s intriguing effort to identify a tradition of “American natural law theory” that links Benjamin Cardozo...

Does Cash Bail Deter Misconduct?

Megan T. Stevenson

Aurelie Ouss

Courts routinely use low cash bail as a financial incentive to ensure that released defendants appear in court and abstain from crime. This can create...

Lon Fuller and the Rule of Law

Frederick Schauer

Although Lon Fuller’s importance and reputation among those who practice general jurisprudence remains contested, it is clear that he remains a major...

Defining Disparate Treatment: A Research Agenda for Our Times

Deborah Hellman

Both statutory and constitutional law prohibiting discrimination forbid actions taken on the basis of certain traits. But rarely are those traits...

Competence for Criminal Adjudication: Client Autonomy and the Significance of Decisional Competence

Richard J. Bonnie

The practice of assessing and adjudicating competence for criminal adjudication in the United States developed largely without assistance from the U.S...