She follows this advice, and the judge sentences her to probation with one day in jail and a suspended sentence of 365 days. LвЂ™s court-appointed lawyer tells her that she should plead guilty to this charge, because it is a misdemeanor and the sentence will be quite short. She is charged with the crime of theft in the third degree, which is the least serious theft crime in Washington.

In 2009, she is arrested for shoplifting a pair of pants from a J.C. L is a nineteen-year-old lawful permanent resident who lives in Seattle, Washington. This Article diagnoses these problems and proposes a variety of possible reforms. It causes irrational and unjust case outcomes, renders the system arbitrary to the people being processed, exacerbates systemic racism, and makes access to a competent lawyer vital. This mechanistic way of using criminal history creates many serious problems in our system. Such formulas translate past conviction information into often-severe consequences like deportations and mandatory minimum sentences. These heuristics are inputted into mechanical formulas like вЂњthree strikesвЂќ laws, sentencing guidelines, and bail algorithms. Such heuristics include the number of past convictions, the types of crimes charged, and the apparent sentences. The system instead relies on rap sheets that record only basic facts-the charge, the date of conviction, and the nominal sentence.Д«ecause of this information poverty, the criminal and immigration systems employ criminal history heuristics when determining the consequences of prior convictions. Factually rich accounts of a personвЂ™s convictions are rarely available. Yet, despite the vital role that criminal history plays in these decisions, judges and prosecutors know very little about the prior crimes of the people they process.

A personвЂ™s past convictions dictate whether they will face new criminal charges, make bond, suffer a lengthy sentence, or be targeted for deportation, among many other consequences. But these systems have little substantive information about past crimes. Criminal history is all-important in the criminal and immigration systems.

Criminal law practice questions