After viewing the documentary: America's War on Drugs - The Prison Industrial Complex, it is clear that the Criminal Justice System is in desperate need of reconstruction and repair with policies such as the mandatory minimum sentencing act which has proven to be unsuccessful and unjust in its efforts to deter 'criminals from committing illegal acts' as seen with the increase of incarcerations of the American people and the devastating effect it has had on those in prison and the family members of those incarcerated. With Canada's Prime Minister Stephan Harper and his Conservative approach to follow in our bordering neighbors foot sets with the Safe Streets and Communities Act, and his 'get tough on crime' approach Canadian's are entering dangerous territory. America government is now warning the Canadian people that these harsher and more punitive laws against the war on drugs will only cause greater damage to both the individuals being incarcerated and to those in the general public as tax payers. This documentary highlighted the devastating consequences that these mandatory minimum sentencing’s can have on people such as in the case of Kemba Smith and Johnny Patillo, two first time offenders who were charged under the mandatory minimum sentencing’s. Johnny Patillo sentenced to serve 10 years and Kemba Smith sentenced to serve 24.5 years, these individuals were no different than your average citizen who got caught in the fire of these barbaric laws and individuals like these two are used as a deterant to send a message to the public in their efforts to take control of the war on drugs.. The senseless and irrational analysis behind these mandatory minimum sentencing laws that left judges with no choice but to hand out deva... ... middle of paper ... ...udget spending was 3.3 million. With these large budget avalabile to Government and Policy makers it is clear that they are not allocating budget wisely and are in desperate need of reoganization, to achieve the goal of attaining greater equality and safer streets with law-abiding citizens. Works Cited 1. The Star. (2014, Febuary 17). Harper Government’s Tough-On-Crime Laws Are Outdated: Editirial. Retrieved from http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2013/08/19/harper_governments_toughoncrime_laws_are_outdated_editorial.html 2. Griffiths, C. (2010). Canadian Corrections. (p. 210, 211, 212). 3. Murray, J. (2005). The effects of imprisonment on families and children of prisoners Retrieved from http://www2.bgsu.edu/downloads/cas/file77089.pdf 4. Santora, M. (2013, August 23). City’s Annual Cost Per Inmate Is $168,000, Stuy Finds. The New York Times.
Located about 40 miles outside of Xian, a city situated in the northeastern section of China, the Tomb of the First Emperor is one of the famous sites of the modern era and has captivated the attention of archaeologists over the past four decades. The site itself is relatively large, with the outer gate being slightly less hen 7,000 yards around and the inner, underground palace containing “a gigantic pit measuring about 300 square yards was excavated in terraces to a depth of more than 100 feet. Archaeologists estimate the size of the subterranean palace built at the bottom of the pit to be about 400 feet by 525 feet, equal to 48 basketball courts” (Hoh, Erling). Yet despite its massive size and the over 40-meter mound that covers the submerged palace itself, the tomb remained relatively unknown until 1974, when a group of farmers discovered some of the first of the famous terracotta warriors that are spread throughout the site. These clay figurines exist in the thousands, and the three major test pits that archaeologists have started to uncover there are over “7,000 terracotta warriors with horses and chariots, all designed to protect the First Emperor in the afterlife” (Liu, Yang). The second most common group of artifacts came from the massive amount of conscripts, estimated at approximately 700,000 in number, who worked for over 35 years to build the tomb. Those that survived the grueling process were rewarded for their hard work and effort by being killed, mainly in order to keep the tombs many traps and treasure troves hidden. So, as you can guess, the murdering of that many people required a fairly large amount of graves to be buried in, and so archaeologists began to analyze the archaeological remains that were present th...
The former drug enforcement official McDonough explores the immensely argued topic of the war on drugs and refutes against the possible alternatives to the problem. McDonough disagrees when he writes “In essence, the advocates of decriminalization of illegal drug use assert that incarceration rates are increasing because of bad drug laws resulting from an insane drug war, most of whose victims are well behaved citizens who happen to use illegal drugs”. In making this comment, McDonough integrates this into his work by continuing on to disprove several parts of the quote, such as how the drug laws are not aggressive, most crimes stem from drug use, and only 21 percent of people in correctional facilities were drug offenders. The way in which
Currently there are 80,000 drug offenders in federal prison, making up a little over 60 percent of the prisons’ population (Stewart 113-114). 94 percent of the drug offenders were sentenced under one of the four mandatory minimum statutes passed by Congress between 1984 and 1990 in an attempt to reduce drug use in the United States. Even further, it was in 1998 that “57 percent of drug defendants entering federal prison were first offenders, and 88 percent of them had no weapons.” On average, these 80,000 prisoners are sentenced to approximately 6 and ½ years in prison (Stewart 113-114). And it is due to the prohibition of mitigating circumstances that leads to these situations. The United States’ prisons are overcrowded. New York Times reported that despite the United States only is home to less than 5 percent of the world’s population, the country provides approximately one quarter of the world’s prisoners (Liptak). Yet some will insist that Todd must have been guilty in someway or another, or maybe he was simply an innocent who fell through the inevitable cracks in the system. On the contrary, that is the exact problem with mandatory sentencing, it’s setup allows people to not only slip through cracks, but to land face first and watch their life
Since former President Nixon’s declaration on the War on Drugs, imprisonments have been on a continuous rise. Citizens caught with illegal substances have been sentenced to harsh punishments in the form of lengthy detentions. What appears to be a great movement to halt the use of drugs has been counterproductive. “Between 1980 and 1997, the population of drug offender inmates alone increase by 1000%” according to David N Khey, a Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Louisiana and co-author of The Encyclopedia of Crime and Punishment. In Professor Khey’s article “Privatization of Prison”, he correlates the rise of incarcerations to businesses and governments who take advantage of the ever growing prison population (Khey, “Privatization of
Mass incarceration has put a large eye-sore of a target on the United States’ back. It is hurting our economy and putting us into more debt. It has considerable social consequences on children and ex-felons. Many of these incarcerations can be due to the “War on Drugs”. We should contract the use of incarceration.
To begin, Mandatory minimum sentences result in prison overcrowding, and based on several studies, it does not alleviate crime, for example crimes such as shoplifting or solicitation. These sentencing guidelines do not allow a judge to take into consideration the first time offender, differentiate the deviance level of the offender, and it does not allow for the judge to alter a punishment or judgment to each individual case. When mandatory sentencing came into effect, the drug lords they were trying to stop are not the ones being affected by the sentences. It is the nonviolent, low-level drug users who are overcrowding the prisons as a result of these sentences. Both the U.S. Sentencing Commission and the Department of Justice have determined that mandatory sentencing is not an effective way to deter crime. Studies show that mandatory minimums have gone downhill due to racial a...
The minimum sentencing regarding drug crimes should be reduced because it negatively impacts everyone involved and is an unjust punishment across the board. I will discuss how the War on Drugs came about, how the current system for these crimes is racist and classist, the negative impacts that come from it across the board, the prison overcrowding issues, and how the minimum sentencing policy is ineffective. No matter how you look at it this issue, one wins in this situation and it’s time for a change.
These two articles clearly display to the reader the pitfalls mandatory minimums sentences can have in the context of certain drug offenses. Illustrating the restrictions mandatory minimums place on a judge’s ability to use their experience and knowledge to assert the right type of punishment over those convicted of crimes. , “Canadians lose confidence in the criminal justice system when the sentence doesn’t fit the crime,” – Michael Cooper (Harris, 2016). This reformation of the courts showed the public that fairness is the focus of the justice system and not just deterrence and or
Canada is viewed as being a very safe and stable place to live because people are lucky enough to have healthcare, benefits for unemployment and family needs, as well as maternity leave. Crime is something that Canadians don’t often think about because people feel as though they are out of harm's way. As Canadians, we’ve watched the world experience different threats and crime, and we’ve seen the world fight back. For example, our neighbors in North America, the United States, have gone through terrorist attacks and issues with guns and violence. Just because we are witnessing these things in other places doesn’t mean that we aren’t at risk as well, and Canada does have certain approaches and regards in place if we are ever in danger. What I wish to address in this paper is how Canada is set up for reacting to crime and jeopardy, as well as an example of where we went wrong in our past. Methods in response to crime, Canada’s legal regime and the issue of Residential schooling for Aboriginals a hundred years ago will be presented.
Jones, C. (2009). Ineffective, Unjust and Inhumane: Mandatory Prison Sentences for Drug Offences. The John Howard Society of Canada.
Caplow,T J Simon - Crime and Justice, 1999 Understanding prison policy and population trends(Dijulio1991),p.64,2p. (DiJulio and Piehl 1991),p64,2p
The “Tough on Crime” and “War on Drugs” policies of the 1970s – 1980s have caused an over populated prison system where incarceration is policy and assistance for prevention was placed on the back burner. As of 2005, a little fewer than 2,000 prisoners are being released every day. These individuals have not gone through treatment or been properly assisted in reentering society. This has caused individuals to reenter the prison system after only a year of being release and this problem will not go away, but will get worst if current thinking does not change. This change must be bigger than putting in place some under funded programs that do not provide support. As the current cost of incarceration is around $30,000 a year per inmate, change to the system/procedure must prevent recidivism and the current problem of over-crowed prisons.
Mandatory minimum sentencing laws also take away input of judges on specific cases and disregard uniqueness of circumstances. For example, in 2013, there was a widowed 55 year-old woman named Shirley Schmitt in Iowa who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for producing about 50 grams of methamphetamine. These laws targeted major suppliers of drugs such as drug traffickers or cartels to protect society but in Schmitt’s case, she was only feeding her addiction (“‘Should Mandatory Sentencing Be Repealed? Yes." Women in Prison.”). Since this case fell under the mandatory minimum laws, the judge’s authority was not taken into account for sentencing. In the March 3, 2017 issue of the Congressional Quarterly Researcher titled “Women in Prison: Should they be treated differently than men?” the author, Sarah Glazer, gave an anecdote of
Thus, unless the magnitude of the benefits exceeds that of the imposed discomfort, the intervention would not be justified. Here, one could potentially argue that the benefits are limited as there are legal boundaries to a court sentence. For instance, for class A misdemeanor such as assault, a judge can only assign a maximum of one year in prison (Norman-Eady). If the judiciary decisions are within these boundaries, it appears that there is already enough legal regulation to correct discrepancies in judiciary decisions; however, even within these legal boundaries, there are sometimes large discrepancy. For instance, for class A felony such as murder, a judge can order the minimum sentence of 25- years or the maximum sentence of 60-years in prison (Norman-Eady). The difference between two extremes constitute much of a person’s lifetime and would be a significant matter for the defendant. Moreover, one report indicates that there are discrepancies between the judges’ rulings. In similar drug-related cases, where the median sentence was 24-months, some judges were found to order a light 12-month sentence while another was found to order a harsh 64-month sentence. With countless court cases each year, even if the majority were to arrive at similar decisions, there are bound to be extreme cases, where the defendants
With almost half of all inmates in U.S. federal prisons serving sentences for drug offenses according to the U.S. Department of Justice (Carson, 2016), efforts taken in the War on Drugs have effectively incarcerated many drug offenders. However, this expensive endeavor has only alienated abusers and, oftentimes, made them into violent criminals as well as furthering their addictions rather than treating them. Smith (personal communication, November 4, 2017), who worked as a counselor in the prison system for many years, explains that drugs are still readily available in prison and locking abusers away does nothing to separate them from the cause of their addictions. The drug epidemics seen on the streets reach into the prisons as well.