Punishment Purposes‪.‬

INTRODUCTION The reform goal of promoting reasonable consistency and reducing disparity in sentencing is meaningless without a frame of reference--consistency or disparity relative to what underlying principles? (1) In order to decide that two offenders are similarly situated and thus should receive similar sentences (or that they are dissimilar and should receive different sentences) we must first define the relevant sentencing factors (the offense and offender characteristics that judges should consider in determining appropriate sentences) and the weight to be given to each of these factors. The choice and weighting of sentencing factors depends, in turn, on the punishment purposes which the sentence is supposed to serve.