Rethinking Minimum Sentencing: The War on Drugs' Impact

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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. On July 13th, President Barack Obama announced that he commuted the sentences of 46 nonviolent drug offenders. This was a huge step towards the right direction of reforming the criminal justice system. As Obama said himself, “it is time to restore …show more content…

For police officers who want to solve more violent, severed cases, it is practically impossible for them to make as much as the officers making arrests for petty, nonviolent drug crimes. More often than not, law enforcement officers are paid based on the amount of arrests they pay. Why would an officer pursue more rape, murder, and burglary cases when they could simple make a few easy drug arrests and get paid the same amount or more with half the work? “The financial incentive built into the system virtually guarantee that the overwhelming majority of drug arrest in the United States will be for nonviolent, low-level drug offenses,” as stated by Michelle Alexander, a civil right advocate and writer. As the amount of petty, drug arrests for nonviolent offenses increases, the respect for police officers and the laws they’re trying to enforce is lost. Although it is not the officer’s fault to blame, the current judicial system pins them up as the bad guy. Making it so that the current system not only hurts those being convicted, but also all the law enforcement involved. With the way the system is set up now, it police officers unable to solve difficult crimes. Drug crimes are easy arrests, and the frequency of them makes causes a police officer’s ability to solve real, hard-hitting cases virtually nonexistent. As for the judges involved, the minimum sentencing requirements basically make it impossible for the judges to actually do their job. With the mandatory minimum sentencing for nonviolent drug crimes, it takes the judge’s ability to serve justice out of the equation. No matter what the individual case may be, there’s no way for an offender to get anything less than that of the mandatory minimum. It’s practically ridding these citizens of the right to a fair trial; seeing that no matter what the judge rules as fair,

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