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House panel OKs criminal sentencing changes State lawmakers took the first steps February 3 to reversing decades of tough-on-crime policies. Without a single dissent, members of the House Committee on Criminal Justice Reform voted to restore some of the discretion taken away from judges more than four decades ago to determine what is an appropriate sentence. HB2673 does not scrap all of the mandatory sentencing laws. In order to divert from the code, a judge would need to find that a mandatory sentence would be an injustice to the defendant, that it is not necessary to protect the public, and that the person was not convicted of a serious or dangerous offense. And judges would have to explain their decision on the record. ....
By Howard Fischer PHOENIX State lawmakers took the first steps Wednesday to reversing decades of tough-on-crime policies. Without a single dissent, members of the House Committee on Criminal Justice Reform voted to restore some of the discretion taken away from judges more than four decades ago to determine what is an appropriate sentence. HB 2673 does not scrap all of the mandatory sentencing laws. In order to divert from the code, a judge would need to find that a mandatory sentence would be an injustice to the defendant, that it is not necessary to protect the public, and that the person was not convicted of a serious or dangerous offense. And judges would have to explain their decision on the record. ....