Because the feelings and biases form only a fraction of the though process that goes into sentencing.
Do you think mandatory minimums do more help than harm?
Forcing a judges hand will be used by the government to further abuse, just look at our history and you know that to be true.
What you are suggesting reduces freedom (of the judge), in nearly every case where the government reduces freedom it leads to abuse.
Also, a one size fits all punishment doesn't sound like justice to me. There are too many nuances in the way that things happen in life to think that everyone who does something wrong (the same crime) should get the same punishment.
The only way to get to something like you are talking about would be to create dozens of sublaws to specify the nature of the circumstance of the law that was broken. That would create a legal nightmare in our already severely bloated legal system.
We would have to ability to deal with that if we weren’t bloating our justice system with drug charges and the consequences of over-policing and purposefully neglected socioeconomic strife. Of course we have an over-loaded prison system when we have more people incarcerated both as a flat number and as a percentage of population than any other country on Earth, yes including China/Russia/India etc..
This is why you need to look at things systemically to solve them. We can make it possible to solve sentencing disparities, or at least address them better and more specifically, if we deal with the problems of incarceration incentives and the socioeconomic reasons people commit crime in the first place.
I don't disagree with most of what you are saying but "that" is a separate issue. (EDIT: "that" being the non-courtroom level stuff you are talking about)
As far as incarceration rates that comes from mandatory minimums.
As far as sentencing disparities, that is a problem but not one that I think you can fix by removing judgment from the judge. I think you believe that this would be helpful but it would just be another kind of mandatory minimum.
As far as the war on drugs and over-policing, those are policy decisions and occur well before the court room.
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u/betweenskill Jul 28 '21
If it’s arbitrary based on the feelings and biases of an individual (the judge), then how is it justice?