Can sentencing be “smart” without technology?
Yes. Sentencing support technology is an important means by which to get useful information to the process, but its ultimate purpose is to get the process to employ best efforts to achieve public safety and any other relevant and legitimate purpose of sentencing. The Oregon Judicial Department has recently revised our Judges’ Criminal Law Bench Book (which is available on the Supreme Court Library’s web page) to include an expanded chapter on sentencing. The first thirty pages or so of that chapter (starting on page 727) are devoted to practical tips to assist in making informed and effective sentencing choices. For example, if a probation officer or district attorney is urging imprisonment to ensure that a repeat low-level offender finally gets drug treatment, the tip is that we need to gather the information about the actual availability to the offender in question of drug treatment in custody. Testing, challenging, and questioning routine assumptions is smarter sentencing than sente
