Mandatory Minimum Sentences are Cruel and Unusual Punishment
Two decades ago it was not uncommon for Americans to believe they had one of the best criminal justice systems in the world. Unfortunately, with the enormous drug trade coming to a pinnacle and the effects of drugs on more and more suburban youth, the government felt a desperate measure had to be taken. In the mid-1980’s congress passed a series of strict laws to keep illegal drugs off the street. What they did not know was how inhumane, cost ineffective and unconstitutional these laws would be. Welcome to the world of mandatory minimums.
Since the Anti Drug Abuse Act was passed in 1986, the United States has been using a system of ‘mandatory minimum’ sentences which is a strict guideline for judges’ sentencing decisions. When a person is convicted of a crime in this country, their criminal history is examined and they are given criminal history points according to guidelines set forth by the federal government. Their offense is also assigned a severity rating by another set of guidelines. A judge, when determining that person's sentence, does not need to use his own discretion, he just looks up the sentence on the chart and off they go to prison. In fact, the judge is not allowed to adjust the sentence on the chart downward, unless that person assists the government in taking other drug offenders off of the streets. This was attributed to a young basketball star by the name of Len Bias. Mr. Bias was the Boston Celtics top pick in the 1986 draft. To celebrate he and a few friends tried smoking crack. Unfortunately, Len had a heart attack and died two days later. This brought shock to Capitol Hill and wi...
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...o support federal prisoners grows faster than any other federal expenditure, including the environment, defense, transportation, social security and most importantly education. In comparison, the average yearly cost for outpatient drug programs is $2,700 to $3,600 and $17,000 to $20,000 per year for residential programs.
As expensive as prison is, it can be a bargain when it comes to keeping violent criminals from preying on the innocent. But loading our prisons with non-violent offenders, often for drug violations, means that there is less room for the more dangerous repeat criminals. The end result is that we have a higher percentage of people in prisons than any other nation on earth-South Africa being a distant second. Although we have passed the dubious milestone of having more than a million Americans in prison, we feel less safe today than ever before.
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.
“The nation 's first drug court was established in Florida in 1989, and there are now more than 2,500 operating nationwide” (Rankinf and Teegardin). From that moment in 1989, America’s judicial system decided to re-evaluate how the courts had been approaching drug addiction and crime. Instead
Today, half of state prisoners are serving time for nonviolent crimes. Over half of federal prisoners are serving time for drug crimes. Mass incarceration seems to be extremely expensive and a waste of money. It is believed to be a massive failure. Increased punishments and jailing have been declining in effectiveness for more than thirty years. Violent crime rates fell by more than fifty percent between 1991 and 2013, while property crime declined by forty-six percent, according to FBI statistics. Yet between 1990 and 2009, the prison population in the U.S. more than doubled, jumping from 771,243 to over 1.6 million (Nadia Prupis, 2015). While jailing may have at first had a positive result on the crime rate, it has reached a point of being less and less worth all the effort. Income growth and an aging population each had a greater effect on the decline in national crime rates than jailing. Mass incarceration and tough-on-crime policies have had huge social and money-related consequences--from its eighty billion dollars per-year price tag to its many societal costs, including an increased risk of recidivism due to barbarous conditions in prison and a lack of after-release reintegration opportunities. The government needs to rethink their strategy and their policies that are bad
Capital punishment remains a cause for debate with people continuing to disagree. on what cruel and unusual punishment consists of. Cruel and unusual punishment being defined as torture or a deliberately degrading punishment, in no way does the death. penalty falls into this category. Having the death penalty in our society deters potential violent offenders from committing crimes, saves the government money, and guarantees that offenders will not commit these crimes again.
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...
Mandatory minimum sentencing is the practice of requiring a predetermined prison sentence for certain crimes. The most notable mandatory minimums are the ones implemented in the 70’s and 80’s, hoping to combat the rising drug problem. Mandatory minimum sentencing has existed in the United States nearly since its very birth, with the first mandatory minimums being put into place around 1790. Recently, as the marijuana laws of many states have scaled back in severity, the issue of mandatory minimums has caused controversy in the US. There are two distinct sides to the argument surrounding mandatory minimum sentencing. One group believes we have a moral obligation to our country requiring us to do no less than lock up anyone with illegal drugs
The United States of America has the world’s highest incarceration rates, for several reasons. The United States of America doesn’t necessarily possess any unique strict laws in comparison to other countries of the world, yet we still have the highest incarceration rate in the world. More federal level and state level prisons are built in order to control and hold more prisoners because most are reaching its full capacity. The United States of America’s “crime rates” increased about 40 years ago when there became a new focus in the areas of crime. The President of the United States of America at the time Richard Nixon used the term “a war on drugs” in order to shed light on public health due to substance abuse. Initially, these policies created
The Judiciary Branch of the United States government is responsible for interpreting the law. Those involved with this branch determine the meaning of the laws and decide what to do with those who break them. Because of a drug movement that took place through the 1980s, the courts have severely punished those who break laws associated to drugs; Congress is now trying to step in to change the way the Judiciary Branch is forced to punish such criminals. Congress has been busy the past couple of years evaluating the proper sentencing of those convicted of drug crimes. Many men and women of Congress are joining forces in an attempt to come up with a solution to propose as an amendment. Our elected leaders believe the need for the reform of drug crimes is due because of the number of cases and number of years those convicted are spending in prisons. Because of the drug wars that took place in the United States, the minimum sentence has been set so high today. Drug reform is needed in the United States, and those convicted of drug crimes with improper sentences need to have their sentence reduced. 1
Jones, C. (2009). Ineffective, Unjust and Inhumane: Mandatory Prison Sentences for Drug Offences. The John Howard Society of Canada.
It is said that prison should be used for more serious crimes such as rape, assault, homicide and robbery (David, 2006). Because the U.S. Prison is used heavily for punishment and prevention of crime, correctional systems in the U.S. tend to be overcrowded (David, 2006). Even though prisons in the U.S. Are used for privies on of crime it doesn 't work. In a 2002 federal study, 67% of inmates that
Overcrowding in our state and federal jails today has become a big issue. Back in the 20th century, prison rates in the U.S were fairly low. During the years later due to economic and political factors, that rate began to rise. According to the Bureau of justice statistics, the amount of people in prison went from 139 per 100,000 inmates to 502 per 100,000 inmates from 1980 to 2009. That is nearly 261%. Over 2.1 million Americans are incarcerated and 7.2 million are either incarcerated or under parole. According to these statistics, the U.S has 25% of the world’s prisoners. (Rick Wilson pg.1) Our prison systems simply have too many people. To try and help fix this problem, there needs to be shorter sentences for smaller crimes. Based on the many people in jail at the moment, funding for prison has dropped tremendously.
However, legalization will be profitable to global economies in two ways. It will allow for money spent on drug law enforcement to be spent more wisely and will increase revenue. There have been escalating costs spent on the war against drugs and countless dollars spent on rehabilitation. Every year in the United States, ten billion dollars are spent on enforcing drug laws alone. Drug violators accounted for about forty percent of all criminals in federal prisons (Rosenthal 1996). In 1989, a Republican county executive of Mercer County, N.J., estimated that it would cost approximately one
“It’s really clear that the most effective way to turn a nonviolent person into a violent one is to send them to prison,” says Harvard University criminologist James Gilligan. The American prison system takes nonviolent offenders and makes them live side-by-side with hardened killers. The very nature of prison, no matter people view it, produces an environment that is inevitably harmful to its residents.
Not only has the drug war failed to reduce violent and property crime, but, by shifting criminal justice resources (the police, courts, prisons, probation officers, etc.) away from directly fighting such crime, the drug war has put citizens’ lives and property at greater risk, Benson and Rasmussen contend. “Getting tough on drugs inevitably translates into getting soft on nondrug crime,” they write. “When a decision is made to wage a ‘war on drugs,’ other things that criminal justice resources might have to be sacrificed.” To support this conclusion, Benson and Rasmussen compare data on drug law enforcement and crime trends between states, and debunk numerous misconceptions about drug use and criminality.
In her article Kristin Mitchell said that “The average cost of someone in the program is $32,974 compared to the $64,338 needed to send him or her to prison for 25 months, or the average prison sentence for drug offenders. Though the treatment in prison can help them while being there. In prison, they have classes where they talk about how you got into jail and how many times you been in jail for the same thing(which is drugs , alcohol, etc) and what can you do to fix it. They help you get better, every time you have that chance to go in there everyone has the chose to talk about how they got into their addiction. In prison they have no choice but to go to the treatment. When they are out of prison, however, they have choices that they must make and many people fall back into their old habits. Treatment centers offer more choices. For this reason, treatment centers provide a more realistic solution to the problem of addiction