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Recidivism Compounding

By Kent Scheidegger et al.

Compound interest is a very powerful force in finance. (Whether Albert Einstein really declared it to be the most powerful force in the universe is undetermined.) But if you choose crime as your career instead, you may run into a different kind of compounding: recidivist sentencing enhancements. The Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) provides additional time for criminals with prior convictions for "violent" crimes and for "serious" drug offenses. What is "serious"? Well, Congress said that if the maximum sentence for the offense is 10 years or more, that's serious. Gino Rodriquez had two priors for burglary, which Congress has declared to be "violent." Then he had a case with three drug offenses, committed on separate occasions but adjudicated together...continue to full post

Full post as published by Crime and Consequences on May 19, 2008 (boomark / email).