Services Available
Pre-Sentence, Dispositional, Alternative to Revocation Reports, and Topic Focused Memorandums
These reports generally contain most of the following components but services easily can be tailored to include specific tasks as needed.
- Prepare Social History
- Review Pre-Sentence Report by Department of Corrections for accuracy and alternative recommendations
- Obtain client records
- Find needed experts
- Coordinate treatment
- Prepare witnesses and client for Sentencing Hearing
- Produce or obtain photography, videos
- Find appropriate sources of community services
- Obtain letters of support
Federal Sentencing Advocacy
Thorough forensic social work and sentencing advocacy can be used effectively at the federal level to discover “aggravating or mitigating circumstances of a kind or to a degree, not adequately taken into consideration by the Sentencing Commission in formulating the guidelines that should result in a sentence different from that described.”
Prior to Booker, Judges granted
downward departures that have held up
through the process of review and potential reversal wherein were used a number of
reasons or factors for reductions. Now that the guidelines are designated as advisory,
these factors (listed below) could be even more helpful in obtaining reasonable sentences.
- Learning disorders, reduced capacity / mental health
- Abusive / dysfunctional home environment
- Criminal family influence
- Drug / alcohol addiction of parents
- Neglect
- Cultural conflict: The role of culture in confession statements
- Confluence of circumstances related to the crime and the defendant: Coercion and duress
- Aberrational nature of the defendant’s conduct
- Susceptibility to abuse in prison
- Rehabilitation efforts, pre- and post- arrest
- Overstatement of criminal history