Essay On Mandatory Sentencing

I will be explaining how I feel bout mandatory minimum sentences and if they have had a positive impact on reducing crime in the U.S. (Schmalleger & Smykla, 2015). I will be explaining the why or why not of mandatory sentencing.

Do you feel that mandatory minimum sentences have a positive impact on reducing crime in the US? Why/ Why not? The way I feel about mandatory minimum sentencing is that it has worked in the short term and has gotten violent criminals off the street mostly involving handguns and drugs with longer mandatory sentences (Schmalleger & Smykla, 2015). I have found that using mandatory minimum sentencing ensures that anyone who commits a certain crime gets a just punishment that cannot be avoided (Larkin

I found that minimum mandatory sentencing does not reduce crime such as sentencing a lower level drug dealer to a mandatory sentence will not stop the drugs from getting to the street (Larkin & Bernick, 2014). They will just replace that dealer with a new dealer. I believe that the biggest reason that minimum mandatory sentencing does not work is that it is not cost effective to the court system or the correction system if shorter sentencings have the same effect as longer sentencings. Therefore, having minimum mandatory sentencing have good intentions, in theory, to get offenders off the streets longer for certain crimes and makes the communities safer (Schmalleger & Smykla, 2015). With good intentions comes some backlash such as, is it cost efficient to the courts and the correctional systems? Do the longer sentencing terms deter the offenders from committing more crimes than a shorter sentence? In my opinion, my answer is no because studies have shown that crime rates have not changed because of minimum mandatory