North Haverhill — One recent morning, two families filed into Courtroom No. 1. Before them, a man on the verge of becoming a convicted sex offender. Between them, about a dozen seats — and a deep divide over what should happen to the defendant.

In the case of State v. Christopher Raymond, the victim's family described the defendant as an abusive man trusted by an innocent girl, as a man who needed to be locked up for a long time.

"He's going to screw up, and I think he'll be in the system until the day he dies," the victim's mother said in an interview.

The defendant's family, however, described Raymond as a remorseful man who fell into a sexual relationship with the girl because of his mental health problems — not the type of person who should be punished with a long prison sentence.

"We're not in denial," Raymond's sister, Angie, said in an interview. "But because of his mental disorders, he needs help."

The divide in this small courtroom illustrates a broader debate about what constitutes justice in cases involving sex crimes.

Joining politicians across the country, Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas and New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch have called for tougher sanctions against those convicted of sexual assaults.

"I think individuals that prey on children are among the worst criminals we face," Lynch said on a stop in Lebanon late last year. "I want to make sure they go to jail and go to jail for a long, long time." How tough are sentences in Vermont and New Hampshire? The question arose dramatically after a Vermont judge handed down a 60-day minimum sentence to an admitted child molester in January.

But sentencing is not straightforward, and toughness is subjective. Sentencing depends on many factors — from the severity of the crime and the attitudes of prosecutors to the desire of the community at large for retribution and the wishes of victims themselves. These and other factors lead to a wide disparity in punishment, from suspended sentences to decades in prison.

In the Raymond case, the judge handed down a 7½-year minimum prison term on one count and suspended prison sentences of 10 to 20 years on five other counts. Prosecutor Nancy Gray said the sentence struck a good balance between punishment and the potential for rehabilitation afforded by extended supervision once Raymond leaves prison and returns to the community.

Raymond's sentence represents a middle-length sentence for defendants convicted locally of sex crimes in recent years. But sentences vary widely.

At the lower end of the sentencing spectrum were the suspended prison term recently given to Frederick J. Stebbins, a 58-year-old Quechee man who sexually abused a girl he knew; the 60-day minimum originally handed down by Chittenden County Judge Edward Cashman for admitted child molester Mark Hulett; and the six-month sentence that Kenneth Harlow of Bradford, Vt. got for sexually assaulting a girl.

At the higher end of the scale are offenders such as Joel L. Lewis of Strafford, who received eight to 38 years in prison for sexually assaulting a child multiple times over a four-year period. Jerry Lee Ramos received 10 to 20 years for breaking into a neighbor's Lebanon apartment late one night and raping her. And Joseph W. Rogers was ordered to spend 20 to 40 years in prison for abducting and sexually assaulting a jogger in Lebanon.

These wide differences in sentencing trouble some public officials who would like to see more uniformity. The disparities lead "to concerns about the criminal justice system and how fair it is," said Vermont Sen. Richard Sears of Bennington County at a recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.

Mandatory minimum sentences are gaining support among politicians advocating for tougher sentencing. Lynch, for instance, has proposed giving prosecutors the ability to seek 25-year minimum prison sentences against first-time offenders who sexually abuse children under the age of 13; if the offenders are convicted, judges would be required to impose the full 25 years. Douglas hasn't proposed mandatory minimums but has said he would sign such legislation.

Dozens of states have instituted mandatory minimum sentences or have sentencing guidelines recommending long terms for sex offenders. And many more states are considering mandatory minimums, said Barbara Tombs, director of the Center for Sentencing and Justice at the Vera Institute for Justice in New York.

In Oregon, for instance, voters passed a measure in 1994 that imposed long mandatory prison terms for 16 designated violent and sex-related offenses. The minimum terms range from 70 months to 300 months.

Studies examining the impact of long terms on states' crime rates have been inconclusive. Oregon did see a decline in violent crime after 1995 that was sharper than the national decline, but Rand Foundation researchers could not establish a direct link between the tougher sentencing structure and reduced crime rate.

Among prosecutors in the Upper Valley, however, mandatory minimum sentences are not universally popular.

Rick St. Hilaire, the Grafton County prosecutor, said he didn't see a need for legislatively mandated minimum prison terms in his jurisdiction. Recent sentences in Grafton County sex crime cases, he said, have included prison time of 10 to 20 years, which he finds acceptable.

"We've been receiving (from judges) the kinds of sentences that are fair and just," said St. Hilaire.

In Vermont, Windsor County State's Attorney Robert Sand said defendants would be unwilling to enter into plea agreements if long mandatory sentences were hanging over their heads. Plea deals, he said, are often crucial in resolving sex crime cases, which are difficult to prosecute.

Nationwide, the conviction rate on sex crime cases brought to trial is about 50 percent. Sand and other prosecutors say they need the flexibility to resolve a case through plea negotiation when a trial would involve painful testimony for a victim or when the verdict might hinge on he said/she said testimony.

Mandatory minimums provide consistency, he said. "But I really believe they are bad for the criminal justice system."

Tougher sentences aren't the only answer in dealing with sex offenders, say experts. In some cases, they say, long sentences would interfere with rehabilitation, an important goal before an offender returns to society. Neither New Hampshire nor Vermont begins in-prison treatment until the offender is nearing his release date; those with long prison sentences would have to wait years to get the rehabilitation that addresses the sort of distorted thinking that leads to sex crimes.

"Prison doesn't fix sexual aggression," said David Burton, a Smith College associate professor and clinical social worker who works with sex offenders. "Punishment only stops behavior. It doesn't change it."

Sentencing decisions turn not just on the severity of the crime, say prosecutors, but on many factors, including the strength of the evidence and the willingness of victims to testify.

Strong evidence can give prosecutors the upper hand in persuading a defendant and his lawyer to accept a plea bargain with a lengthier sentence. Strong evidence, in fact, allowed Grafton County prosecutors to win a longer sentence for Christopher Raymond than for a defendant in another, similar case.

In Raymond's case, police had evidence of computer instant messages between him and the victim detailing past sexual encounters and an encounter they planned to have, according to police records. Police had also recorded the girl's conversation with Raymond on the telephone.

By contrast, Michael Posnanski, a 35-year-old Enfield resident, got a lighter sentence — three to eight years — after pleading guilty last month to two counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault against a child.

The 4½-year difference in the minimum prison time between these two men came down to evidence, prosecutors said. In Posnanski's case, incriminating statements he made to the police appeared to be inadmissible, largely because his IQ scores turned out to be low, said Assistant County Attorney Laura Saffo.

Without Posnanski's statement, said St. Hilaire, the whole case was "riding on the shoulders of the child."

The Posnanski case illustrates the reason prosecutors often seek a plea bargain rather than try to take the matter to trial. Much, if not all, of the evidence might be based on the testimony of the victims, and in many cases, victims are reluctant to testify. The reasons for that vary: Abusers may be family members. The victims might be children intimidated by lawyers and courtrooms, or they may be adults disturbed by the prospect of having private details aired in public.

"It's the only crime I see on a regular basis where the victim is subject to scrutiny," said St. Hilaire.

Portsmouth defense lawyer Philip Desfosses said the desire to give all sex offenders long prison sentences ignores the reality that the victims are often family members. Those victims may have complicated feelings about sending relatives away.

Desfosses said he once represented a man convicted of molesting his stepdaughter. The victim wanted her stepfather sent to prison for a few years and to get treatment, he said. Instead, the defendant was ordered to spend at least 30 years in prison on multiple counts. The girl was so upset she tried unsuccessfully to get the convictions overturned by saying the molestation never happened.

"People need to distinguish between the people who are grabbing the kids in the park and these other situations," said Desfosses.

Indeed, victims' ideas of just punishment are "probably as diverse as the victims themselves," said Linda Griebsch, public policy director for the New Hampshire Coalition against Domestic and Sexual Violence.

What unites victims, she said, is the desire to be believed, to hear the perpetrators admit guilt and to feel safe. Some victims, she said, want defendants to be locked away for many years; others assign less value to longer sentences.

Gov. Lynch's proposed 25-year mandatory minimum sentences for first-time offenders would work "fine for the ogre who jumps out of the bushes," Griebsch said. "But when you're talking about Uncle Billy being sent away for 25 years, the child may not be supported by the other family members.

"My concern is that this could have a very chilling impact on reporting."

Sentencing also takes into account the state's interest in deterring further sex crimes, retribution, public safety and rehabilitation of the offender. How individual prosecutors and judges view and rank each of those factors can help explain disparities between one sentence and another.

Because Vermont has no sentencing guidelines, punishment is "highly, highly subjective," said Sand, Windsor County's prosecutor.

Individual prosecutors, as well as the judges who rotate from court to court, take different approaches to sentencing. As a result of the autonomy of each county, "from case to case, and court to court, we get significant disparities," said Sand, who has proposed to legislators that the state adopt sentencing guidelines that would establish parameters for judges' decisions.

Different crimes bring different concerns among prosecutors, which leads to different sentencing decisions, explained St. Hilaire. "All crimes have their own pecking order."

In sentencing rapists and child molesters, for example, prosecutors in St. Hilaire's office consider first public safety and "a sense of community justice." After these top considerations come rehabilitation through a sex-offender treatment program and sending a message to the community that certain behaviors won't be tolerated, a concept known as general deterrence.

By contrast, St. Hilaire said the first goal in sentencing a person convicted of heroin possession is rehabilitation.

But not every prosecutor places as high a value on general deterrence. Sand, for instance, said sex offenders are often acting on impulses or have distorted thoughts, leading him to question the deterrent value of other offenders getting tough sentences.

"The unfortunate fallacy in this notion of general deterrence is that the people coming to court are not thinking about the consequences," he said.

Nor is the desire for retribution a given in all sentencing choices. In Windsor County recently, it was not lack of evidence but rather the expressed wishes of the victim that helped determine the outcome of a sexual assault case.

Authorities had damning evidence against Stebbins, the 58-year-old Quechee man: a confession to Hartford police that he had sexually abused a girl he knew over a two-year period, court records show.

But the victim in the case told the prosecutor she did not want Stebbins to serve prison time. In addition, Stebbins had gone to the police about the crime before the police came to him, had no previous criminal convictions and had voluntarily enrolled in a community sex offender treatment program.

Those four factors left the state's attorney's office weighing "retributive need" in the sentencing equation, said prosecutor Sand. If Stebbins had been ordered to prison for the sake only of punishment, he would have been pulled out of a community treatment program in which his therapist testified he was starting to make progress.

Sand said the case illustrated a tension between retribution and pragmatism.

"Did he deserve to go to jail? Yes, this was horrible conduct," Sand said. "(But) would it have served a greater societal value in light of the other four factors?"

Ultimately, the office entered into a plea agreement that called for a suspended prison sentence of five to 10 years, which Stebbins will have to serve only if he violates conditions of his probation, which require him to regularly check in with a supervising officer, avoid contact with children and abide by other restrictions.

Prison time "is one type of punishment, but it's not the only type of punishment," Sand said. "The fact that a person's day-to-day life is radically altered by (probation) conditions is also punishment."

The complexity of individual sex-crime cases illustrates why a one-size-fits-all approach does not work, argues Sand.

The now notorious Hulett case, in which Judge Cashman handed down a 60-day minimum sentence, is a good illustration of what happens when people spar over the factors considered in sentencing, according to Vermont Law School professor Michael Mello. Though Cashman never said he did not believe in punishment, as was initially reported, he did say at the hearing, "I keep telling prosecutors, and they won't hear me, that punishment is not enough."

"I started out as a 'just deserts' sentencer. I liked it. Across the line? Pop them," Cashman said in court. "Well, then I discovered it accomplishes nothing of value. It doesn't make anything better."

Cashman initially issued the minimum 60-day sentence, he explained, because it was the only way to get Hulett quickly into a treatment program, which the judge said he needed in order to avoid repeating his crimes. At that time, the Department of Corrections was not offering treatment in prison to sex offenders who, like Hulett, were deemed a low risk of re-offending once they left prison.

The department later changed its policy to provide treatment for low-risk offenders, and Cashman extended the minimum sentence to three years, defusing the controversy.

Cashman apparently believed the goals of retribution and "specific deterrence" — that is preventing Hulett from offending again — were in direct conflict, Mello said. Given the choice between the court seeking retribution and protecting the community, Cashman opted for the latter.

In the judge's view, Mello said, "It was a zero sum game."

Mello, however, said that Cashman's was a "false dilemma," because a long prison sentence is also a way to protect the community. Retribution, he said, is an expression of "the community's legitimate outrage at especially offensive conduct."

Like the vast majority of people convicted of sex crimes, Christopher Raymond never jumped out of a dark alley and grabbed his victim's arm, never lured her into his car with promises. He was a divorced armored-car guard living with his parents. The girl came to the place he lived as part of her after-school job. They talked and appeared to be friends, though the relationship hinged on distortions. He told her "she was beautiful, and looked like a woman, not a child," the girl's mother said in Grafton Superior Court.

Raymond had problems long before he ever met the girl, his sister, Angie Raymond, said in an interview.

"Christopher was always immature for his age, and he did what he could to hold his anger and sadness inside himself throughout the school day and he saved it until he got home," Angie Raymond wrote in a letter to his probation officer. "There in the safety of family who would love him unconditionally, he tantrumed, exploded in anger and locked himself in his room in tremendous sadness."

A doctor determined after his arrest that he has mood disorders, psychotic tendencies and borderline bipolar disorder, Christopher Raymond testified. But when the crimes were committed in the spring of 2005, he said, he was on medicine only for depression.

The depression medication was not working, his lawyer, Charlie Buttrey, told the judge. Raymond was wrongly trying to "self-medicate" by using the sexual relationship with the girl to help himself, Buttrey said.

Shortly before the hearing, Raymond had written Gov. Lynch a letter noting that the crime with which he was charged — aggravated sexual assault against a child — is the one that could get a much stiffer penalty under the governor's proposal for tougher sentencing.

"(L)awmakers and justice departments don't see the big picture about being branded with this crime," Raymond wrote in the letter, a copy of which was provided to the Valley News by his sister. "They want to punish us for the rest of our lives. Why do all of us have to spend an eternity in jail too?"

The victim's mother said in court, meanwhile, that her daughter was trying to cope with the fallout of a relationship she was too young to understand. "She will have to figure out," the mother said, "why he chose to prey on her."

The girl's parents supported the plea agreement because it spared her from having to testify. But assigning a number to the amount of time they want to see Raymond locked away is impossible.