The Expansion Of Mandatory Sentencing Penalties For Federal Crimes

For many years, drugs have been the center of crime and the criminal justice system in the United States. Due to this widespread epidemic, President Richard Nixon declared the “War on Drugs” in 1971 with a campaign that promoted the prohibition of illicit substances and implemented policies to discourage the overall production, distribution, and consumption. The War on Drugs and the U.S. drug policy has experienced the most significant and complex challenges between criminal law and the values of today’s society. With implemented drug polices becoming much harsher over the years in order to reduce the overall misuse and abuse of drugs and a expanded federal budget, it has sparked a nation wide debate whether or not they have created more harm than good. When looking at the negative consequences of these policies not only has billions of dollars gone to waste, but the United States has also seen public health issues, mass incarceration, and violent drug related crime within the black market in which feeds our global demands and economy. With this failed approach for drug prohibition, there continues to be an increase in the overall production of illicit substances, high rate of violence, and an unfavorable impact to our nation.

Mandatory minimum laws, which set different minimum sentences for crack and powder cocaine possession, are policies that are inflexible, “one-size-fits-all” sentencing laws that undermine the constitutional principle that the punishment should fit the crime and undermine the judicial power to punish an individual in context of the specific circumstances. Similarly, 3-strikes laws also ignores judicial discretion. Truth-in-sentencing policies refer to policies created to have a convict serve the full sentence, regardless of good behavior or other deterrent. These policies are created to only incapacitate people—more specifically minorities—not to rehabilitate them. More people in jail and longer sentences are not helping ensure public safety.

This journal article discusses how the government has increased “mandatory sentencing” using “aggressive initiatives” for drug related crimes. Additionally, these government implemented sentencing guidelines have made the prison population grow

The concept of mandatory sentencing is a relatively new idea in the legal field. It was first introduced in 1951 with the Boggs Act, and it made simple marijuana possession a minimum of two to ten years with a $20,000 fine. This was eventually repealed by Congress in 1970, but mandatory sentences came back with the passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. Since then, the scope and presence of mandatory sentencing has only grown, especially mandatory sentences for drug related offenses. Recently, there has been a growing concern over the use and implementation of mandatory minimum sentencing, with many believing it reduces a judge’s ability to give out a sentence that they feel accordingly fits the crime. Many advocates for mandatory

Mass incarceration became a public policy issue in the United States in the early 2010s. Now in 2016, there is still much debate over the country’s incarcerated population and incarceration rate. The nation has the highest incarcerated population in the world, with 2,217,947 inmates, in front of China with 1,649,804. America incarcerates 693 inmates per 100,000 residents, only the African island nation Seychelles incarcerates at a higher rate, with 799 for every 100,000 residents. The problem of mass incarceration continues to be assessed in various contexts. Recent analyses are historian Elizabeth Hinton’s From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime, legal scholar Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, and criminologist Dr. Elizabeth Brown’s “Toward Refining the Criminology of Mass Incarceration: Group-Based Trajectories of U.S. States, 1977—2010.”

The War on Drugs is seen by many as an enormous factor of mass incarceration. There were more than 1.5 million drug arrests in the U.S. in 2014. More than 80% of them were for possession only (Drug Policy Alliance, 2017). 208,000 people are incarcerated for drug offenses in state prisons and 97,000 are incarcerated in federal prisons for the same reason. 1 in 5 incarcerated people are drug offenders (Peter Wagner, Bernadette Rabuy, 2017). According to Politifact, “The state and federal prison population remained fairly stable through the early 1970s, until the war on drugs began. Since then, it has increased sharply every year, particularly when Reagan expanded the policy effort in the 1980s, until about 2010…. In 1980, about 41,000 people were incarcerated for drug crimes, according to the Sentencing Project. In 2014, that number was about 488,400 — a 1,000 percent increase.” Even other factors, like

Longer sentences has been a major cause of mass incarceration. Thus, changing how governments respond to all crime, not just drug crime, is critical to reducing the size of prison

The United States incarcerates more people, per capita, than any other nation in the entire world. State and local prisons and jails account for about 80% of incarcerations. Although crime rates have decreased since the 1990s, incarceration rates have soared. According to a recent Prison Policy Initiative publication, approximately 2.3 million people are currently “locked up” in the United States. Of these 2.3 million people, 1 in 5 are locked up for a drug related offense. Statistics show that prisoners and felons imprisoned for drug related crimes are disproportionately Black and Hispanic. The mass incarceration issue in the United States derives from the many arrests associated with these “offenses” regarding drugs and the war on drugs.

In the article “Mandatory Minimum Sentencing: A Failed Policy,” the author highlights how mandatory minimum sentencing is a policy that has failed in attempt to put an end to drug crimes. Batey stated that the attempts of federal and state thought that they could “get tough on crime,” particularly drug offense, by eliminating the sentence discretion of judges and restoring it with long minimum sentences that applied regardless of defendant's individual circumstances (Batey 24). Moreover, the mandatory minimum sentences take authority away from the judge and give it to the prosecutor, who decides whether to charge the defendant with a crime carrying a long minimum sentence or much less offense. Withal, mandatory minimum sentences have failed due to giving America’s power too much power in plea bargaining, an imbalance that has led to the incarceration of persons too fearful to insist on a hearing that might have released them (Batey 25). Finally, Batey mentions that mandatory minimum sentence policy has filled prisons with the wrong people, which are minor players, not drug kingpins, and even some who are innocent (Batey 25).

Since the 1980s drug offenses have increased from nineteen thousand to two hundred sixty five thousand in 2008. For many years now, our jails have been struggling with overcrowding. In 2010, our President Barack Obama, signed the Fair Sentencing Act. The Fair Sentencing Act helps reduce disproportion between the amount of crack cocaine and powder cocaine. The act helps in determining whether a person who is caught with five grams of crack/ powder cocaine, should receive the same sentencing as someone who has one hundred times more than that. According to the National Governor’s Association, forty-six states were faced with a budget deficit. With the implementation of the Fair sentencing Act in place, we can begin to see the reduction in jail overcrowding.

“The Smarter Sentencing Act (S. 502/H.R. 920) is a bipartisan bill sponsored by Senators Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Mike Lee (R-UT) in the U.S. Senate and Representatives Raul Labrador (R-ID) and Bobby Scott (D-VA) in the U.S. House of Representatives. The bill does not repeal any federal mandatory minimum sentences, but instead reduces prison costs and populations by creating fairer, less costly minimum terms for nonviolent drug offenders.”

The mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug crimes should be abolished. Treatment and rehabilitation efforts

The National probation on drugs dubbed “the war on drugs” is a failure in almost every sense of the imagination, as it has only led to economic problems such as increased taxes on prisons and increased police activity. It has also put a much higher demand on drugs, and as a result, has increased drug activity. As stated by economist Milton Friedman in an interview with award winning drug reporter Randy Paige, the United States alone spends tens of billions of dollars a day on minor drug arrests. Another problem with the war on drugs is that despite the heavy cost of imprisonment among citizens, people still continue to use drugs, in fact, according to Dr. Michael Lowenstein the medical

As stated in the introduction, the United States has the largest prison population in the world. In “Correcting Course: Lessons from the 1970 Repeal of Mandatory Minimums” (2008), Molly Gill states, “Many of the offenders are not murderers, robbers, or rapists, but drug users, addicts, or sellers” (Gill, 2008, p. 55). When charting the history of mandatory minimum sentencing, from 1951, to their repeal in 1970, and their reinstatement in the mid 1980’s, much of the evidence regarding its successes is questionable. Mandatory minimums fail with respect to reducing drug use and drug crime. The Boggs Act, in the 1950’s, attempts to curb the use and distribution of drugs with strict minimums, but fails, as evidenced by excessive use of marijuana and hallucinogenic drugs in the 1960’s. The harsh reality of mandatory minimums is they are not working or discouraging drug use. What they are doing is contributing to the exploding cost of corrections, and imposing heavy burdens on families because the wage earner is serving a lengthy prison sentence. In the ten years prior to 2000, drug offenders account for more than half of the federal prison population growth. In 2000, more than half of federal prisoners are serving sentences for drug offenses. By 2007, close to five and half billion dollars is being spent to incarcerate federal inmates. The author notes that mandatory minimums create disparities in sentencing and federalizes offenses that fall under state jurisdiction. By the

The rate of people incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses increased from 50,000 in 1980, to over 400,000 by 1997. This significant increase can be a result of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which set mandatory minimum sentences for drug related crimes. In the 80s, the media’s portrayal of individuals who were addicted to crack cocaine is what made the public become so concerned