system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Victim impact statements should not be part of sentencing

To give some context, I've always struggled to understand why the impact to victims in a criminal case is relevant to sentencing. Lets say for example you have someone who is charged with murder, obviously if they are found guilty they should face the appropriate punishment for their crime. But I don't see why having statements read by  family members or friends should impact the severity of the sentence. 

I think this is especially true of crimes where ill-intent was not present, and the emotional impact of a grieving family gets in the way of the suspect getting a fair sentencing hearing. In no way do I want to belittle or disregard what victims and their families go through, but sometimes it may be difficult for them to see beyond their emotions and think of the big picture. Perhaps the cause of my view is because I would like to consider the utility of a criminal sentence, not the justice aspect of it. It is very difficult for me to put myself in the shoes of a victim of a crime, but if I saw the perpetrator did not harm me or a family member on purpose, and only due to negligence, I would struggle to give a statement that could further increase the severity of the sentence. If I lost a loved one due to a drunk driving accident or something similar, I don't see how sending the perpetrator to prison would make me feel better in any way at all. In fact, even if I was very angry at that person at the time, within a few months I would likely start to feel sorry for them and even feel guilty about giving a victim impact statement. 

In summary, I guess I've always felt its smarter to be rational when it comes to sentencing and not allow emotions to get in the way. I just think that decisions, especially those that affect possibly decades of someone's life, should not be impacted by someone's reaction to the event. 

All this being said, I feel someone impacted by a crime should be allowed to be somehow paid back for the impact that the crime has had on them. I just don't see how sending someone to prison could possibly bring them any joy. I definitely feel that the impacts of crime on their victims more so belong in civil cases than they do in criminal cases. In civil cases, I 100% agree with suing for pain and suffering and other impacts, financially or otherwise.
gpt
Let’s say you have someone being sentenced for assault . He gets into a fight at his high school, punches a guy right in the face, the resource officer sees it and presses charges . The guy he punched knew he deserved it because he had been harassing dude’s girlfriend all day and didn’t want to press charges. They go to sentencing, the resource officer reads the victim statement with the rest of the findings and sentencing occurs .

Scenario 2... same thing but the victim instead is someone defenseless and unsuspecting and it has completely rocked his world . 

Why *shouldn’t* the sentence be different in these two scenarios ? 

That’s why there’s minimum and maximum sentences because they operate on a spectrum where the victim impact statement is absolutely relevant .