If You Gave Me a Magic Wand (Some Unsolicited Thoughts on Reforming the Sentencing Laws)

The School of Government is a nonpartisan, non-advocacy institution. That’s a tradition I take seriously. If you can find something in the nearly 400 blog posts I’ve written here since 2009 that makes you think otherwise, I hope you’ll let me know. That said, I am occasionally asked what I would do if someone gave me a magic wand and told me to make our sentencing law better. “Better” can be a tough concept to navigate while staying true to the School’s policy-neutral underpinnings. But I don’t mind sharing a few ideas focused on the mechanics of the sentencing law—largely as a thought experiment designed to call attention to some of the more confusing aspects of existing law. For all of the suggestions that follow, please assume they would be implemented in a resource-neutral way. In other words, I’m not trying to propose anything that would necessarily increase or decrease North Carolina’s correctional population. Instead, I’m focused on changes that I think would make the law easier to understand and administer. Suggestion number one: Simplify the felony sentencing grid. After 10 years of teaching, writing, and advising on our state sentencing law, I can tell you that the felony sentencing grid is not . . . intuitive. It’s not rocket science either, but many lawyers and most citizens who look at it for the first time have a hard time translating the numbers they see into a practical understanding of how long a person will be behind bars. The first surprise for [...]