Mandatory Minimum Sentencing

Abstract

Mandatory minimum sentencing requires that offenders serve a predefined term for certain crimes, commonly serious and violent offenses, and judges are bound by law to enforce them. Explain the reasons why there have been calls to repeal or reform mandatory minimum sentencing laws. Based on your findings, are you in favor of repealing mandatory minimum sentencing laws?

Introduction

Mandatory minimum sentencing was part of a set of strict guidelines implemented during a get tough on crime / War on Drugs era during the 1990s that resulted in an explosion of the prison population. By the 21st century, nearly half of all inmates in federal or state prison were incarcerated for non-violent crimes that resulted from this set of strict guidelines (Smith & Hattery, 2006). The cost of imprisonment had reached $10 billion annually (Smith & Hattery, 2006). Yet, alternative sentencing, such as restorative justice programs, has been found to be more effective at reducing crime and rates of recidivism and represents a mere fraction of the cost that incarceration represents (Johnson et al., 2015). Moreover, prisoners often have their labor exploited by corporations, receiving very little in terms of remuneration (Hammad, 2019). Thus, the tough on crime laws, such as mandatory minimum sentencing, perpetuate a prison industrial complex while doing nothing to resolve the cultural, social, and economic issues that lead to crime. In fact, Peters et al. (2015) argue that many of those affected by mandatory minimum sentencing laws actually represent mental health issues rather than criminal issues, and in these cases mandatory minimum sentencing is merely a punitive form of justice that shows no care or concern for the offender as a human being. What the research shows is that rather than mandatory minimum sentencing, the criminal justice system should be looking at alternative sentencing and other ways to help individuals caught in a cycle of recidivism and crime.

Why Reform is Needed

Calls to repeal or reform mandatory minimum sentencing laws are based on the fact that incarceration rates are so high in the US compared to other countries, that alternative sentencing appears to be a solution to the problem of cost and recidivism, and that mental health issues are not treated adequately in the prison system. In punitive justice systems, the dignity of the human person is ignored, the cost of incarceration is ignored (both to the public and to the communities that see many of their members serving minimum mandatory sentences), and viable alternatives to incarceration are ignored. Indeed, a significant percentage of drug offenders are...…may be necessary in some cases, but in other cases the possibility of alternative sentencing should also be available. Mental health services should be an option instead of incarceration in other cases. Yet because many offenders accept plea deals as a way of avoiding trial for fear of receiving a harsher sentence that the prosecution says they will risk receiving if convicted, there is never much opportunity for alternative approaches to justice to be realized. Balance is needed and a more cautionary approach to criminal justice should be adopted.

Conclusion

It is impossible to generalize or universalize an approach to criminal justice that represents all the myriad issues that may arise from case to case. Justices need to have, at the very minimum, the ability to give sentencing that is appropriate to each case, and offenders need to have the opportunity to see that their trials are conducted fairly and impartially instead of fast-tracked through a system that tends toward incarceration as the de facto solution to criminal conduct. Understanding mental health issues, criminological theories, restorative justice, and alternative sentencing can help judges see beyond incarceration as a catch-all answer to crimebut in other cases, incarceration may be the deterrent that some offenders need. It is a situation that ought not be generalized…