The President's Commission and Sentencing, Then and Now

• Author: Michael Tonry
• Published date: 01 May 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12368
• Date: 01 May 2018

RESEARCH ARTICLE

PRESIDENT’S CRIME COMMISSION:

PAST AND FUTURE

The President’s Commission and Sentencing,

Then and Now

Michael Tonry

University of Minnesota

Abstract

The proposals made in 1967 by the U.S. President’s Commission on Law Enforcement

and Administration of Justice on sentencing were sensible, humane, well informed,

and ambitious. They were premised on an assumption that indeterminate sentencing,

then ubiquitous, would long continue, and sought to remedy its weaknesses and build

on its strengths. That assumption proved wrong. Within a decade, indeterminate

sentencing and its rehabilitative aspirations lost credibility and legitimacy. Within

two decades, American policies incorporated features such as determinate sentences,

lengthy prison terms, and mandatory minimum sentence laws that the Commission

explicitly repudiated. The Commission’s influence is evident in successful sentencing

reform initiatives of the 1970s and early 1980s, some of which survive in a few places

in compromised forms. Many of the Commission’s proposals to make sentencing fairer,

more consistent, and less vulnerable to influence by political considerations and public

emotion are as germane today as they were in 1967.

Keywords

sentencing reform, indeterminate sentencing, guidelines, sentencing structure

Policies, practices, and prevailing ways of thought concerning sentencing were funda-

mentally different in 1967 when the U.S. President’s Commission on Law Enforce-

ment and Administration of Justice (commonly known as the President’s Crime

Commission or just “the Commission”) issued The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society.

Direct correspondence to Michael Tonry, School of Law, University of Minnesota, 229 19th Avenue South,

Minneapolis, MN 55455 (e-mail: tonry001@umn.edu).

DOI:10.1111/1745-9133.12368 C2018 American Society of Criminology 341

Criminology & Public Policy rVolume 17 rIssue 2