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Prison Policy

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Prison Term Policy Recommendation
CJA/314
August 24, 2014

Ladies and gentleman of the counsel I am here today to discuss the bill that is going forward for a vote later on today. As a criminologist, I have been hired by a state legislator as his advisor to bring more knowledge to the bill that is soon to be voted on. The bill seeks longer sentence times for anyone who is convicted of armed robbery. The objective of this bill would be to double maximum sentence so that it will be a reminder to the people before they commit this heinous crime. The logic behind this bill allows judges to sentence the accused when found guilty to a max sentence of 12 years in prison. Here in the State of Colorado the maximum sentence for such a crime is a maximum of six years with a minimum of two. The average cost in 2011 for a federal inmate was just over 28 thousand dollars per year. I have been brought on to examine if this bill would be beneficial and bring armed robbery crimes. Whatever my findings are will be backed by facts, and will ultimately be voted on by the state legislators. In 2005, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reported there were 417, 122 armed robberies. This overall lower than what it was ten years ago. I myself see no problem with raising the prison sentence for a longer term, but I cannot support a bill that will double the sentence, costing the taxpayers millions of dollars each and every year extra the inmate is behind bars. People who break laws we put in place should face prison time, but having such a long sentence will not fix the problems of rehabilitating these individuals. Such crimes like armed robbery carry 30 plus years in a few states. Stating that, I do believe that if someone was to be injured or killed by the person committing the crime, then that person should face life in prison or a much longer time to serve.
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