There is a trend now to sentence the convicted not solely on the crime and the convicted's past life. This trend is referred to as evidence-based sentencing and is based on data-driven predictions of defendants’ future crime risk to shape sentences. Twenty states have implemented this practice and more are considering it.
What's wrong with this idea is that the punishment is based not on what the convicted actually did but on what he might do in the future. And what he might do is based on what the data shows as typical of the 'class' to which the convicted belongs. The data could include such items as unemployment, marital status, age, education, finances, neighborhood, and family background, including family members’ criminal history.
This concept certainly sounds weird and unfair to me.
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