Mandatory minimums are I think kind of defeating the purpose. Because its suppose to be for violent offenders and offenders who you would want to keep off the streets. But 9 times out of 10 there are non-violent offenders being locked up for a mandatory minimum sentence, that should not be serving a lengthy sentence. In this article he stated that "crack tough punishment routine: 5 years for crack rocks." Which was the sizes of sugar cubes. Even though crack is illegal and you should serve time for it. I think that you should serve at least 2 to 3 years then get placed into a rehab facility. To actually learn that drugs doesn't contribute to a successful life. Later on in the article he stated that, "Intended to ensure uniform discipline, these policies simply shifted discretion to prosecutors." So in other words they are putting all the pressure on the prosecutors, to determine if they should even take the case to court. Because probably the case that was presented to the prosecutor is most likely a non-violent offender who probably got arrested for the wrong reasons. What really caught my attention was that in 2011 He founded the country's first federal clemency clinic at the University of St. Thomas Minnesota. Which I think was really helpful for the criminal justice system. But if anyone asked me if I was against or for mandatory minimums, I would say both because in some ways it works and some it doesn't. Which I think needs to thoroughly taught in the police academy. On how to use your discretion in that situation.-K9003
In my own opinion, I believe that there are lots of other roads ahead for offenders and that they can overcome their addiction. Drug addiction has a psychology to it that people even I would most likely never understand. They want to overcome their addiction though, and they would like to be better people for their family especially. Sending people to prison a long time only makes non violent offenders violent and they go back to jail just as everyone else that is violent. Poor people are a good example, its in their neighborhoods, its on the street to see people use substances and also in their own household. Substances are not healthy and we should teach our children how bad they are because they really can affect your life. sweetiesasha.mattiejackson.002
Mandatory minimum sentences should be eliminated. Not everyone who does a crime has the same intentions. An example I’ve heard is: John is nineteen. His uncle asks him to take his guns with him so his wife doesn’t know he’s got them. John has a FOID card, so he’s legally able to have the shotgun in his vehicle. What John doesn’t know is that uncle Bob slipped his 9mm Ruger in the case before he handed it over to John. John gets stopped on the way home by a state trooper and the trooper confiscates the guns. Now John is getting in trouble for illegally obtaining the handgun and (just for example) is now sentenced to a minimum of ten years. On the flip side, Bubba is a Crips gang member. Having just put the hit out a week before for a Bloods member, he walks around the neighborhood wearing an AK47 on his back with a Glock 35 on his hip and a Beretta on his ankle, waiting for the rival gang to retaliate. Bubba has intentions on using his guns for bad, for killing people. Bubba gets the minimum mandatory sentence of ten years. Bubba and John both get the same sentences. The catch? John wasn’t intending to use the firearms in any way, he was transporting them. Minimum mandatory sentences need to go. Gators003
I think mandatory minimums need to be changed. I understand on why this all came about and it was to crack down on the drug issues in the U.S. It has clearly worked in some cases and clearly not worked in others. There is no since in having a young man that has never been caught selling drugs to be sentenced the same as a drug dealer that deals to just make money. So many young kid’s lives’ are over and have been ruined over these mandatory minimums. I am not saying that the sentence should be light, most of these people no right from wrong and should not get off lightly but there are many other ways to show them that this came get really bad and your life will be spent in jail if they keep it up and don’t stop. GRUNT003
Mandatory minimums are a bad idea because they remove a high degree of judicial discretion. Instead of a judge being able to determine the proper sentence based on an offenders criminal history and current likelihood to re offend they have to give multiple years in prison due to drug possession. A better alternative to mandatory minimum sentencing could be to give a lesser punishment to an offender if they are able to give actionable evidence on the person they got the drugs from or the person who is in charge of the drug operation in the area. A first time drug offender is probably going to be somebody trying to make fast money or to be cool like his drug dealing peers. Locking up the knucklehead that thought selling drugs on a street corner or moving some from city to city won't do anything to stop the drug trade because the people bringing the real scourge are just going to find another knucklehead to use. If we really want to break the back of the drug trade we should aim higher on the chain to take out the people in charge of the drug operations instead of clogging prisons with young idiots who just wanted to have the nice car or look cool to the people in the gang they just joined. If we want to stop people from continuing to offend we should stop over punishing them and start showing them how much harm they're doing with the drugs they're running or selling. Maybe taking them to a maternity ward for babies born addicted to crack or making them talk to the grieving mother who's toddler was killed by stray bullets from a drug gang shootout. Relying on the general deterrence and incapacitation provided by lengthy prison sentences across the board is obviously too expensive and not effective in winning the war on drugs. CoolGuy003
This article discuses mandatory minimums and how it has affected specific people. Mandatory minimums play a large role in the sentencing process of a case. The majority of mandatory minimums are in place to prevent the offenders with evil intent from re offending. A mandatory minimum places a specific sentence on a crime and will not allow the judge to punish below it. The article mainly discusses drugs and how the mandatory minimum does not give judges the ability to decide what the defendant actually deserves. The example we use in class is a perfect example that shows why mandatory minimums need to be changed to allow the judge to have more discretion. If a young adult in college is trying to pay for his school books by selling very small amounts of cocaine there is no reason to give him a mandatory minimum for his sentence. He is simply trying to afford an education and has no violent intentions. Another example would be with a group of irresponsible teenagers. These teenagers do not need 20 years in prison to get them straightened out for using cocaine once in their lives. I agree that mandatory minimums make it difficult for a judge to have discretion in a court room and they need to be removed to allow some fluctuation to the punishment. -Bulls003
There is obviously a problem with our court system with mandatory minimum sentences. It is a new day and age a lot different from back when we had a war on drugs. Heavy sentence were issued out to first time offenders for m=possessing drugs. This is ridiculous and is the leading cause to why prisons and jails are so over populated. From working in the jail I see this every day. Most of the federal inmates that come into Peoria county jail are nonviolent drug offenders facing years behind bars. These sentences is something that needs to be changed in order to lower the booming prison and jail populations. I would not be surprised within the next 10 years that there will be an overhaul of the justice system and these charges will be lowered. All of these examples in this article are clear that things need to change. Max003
The reason behind the why the federal prisons are incarcerating these non-violent drug offenders to long sentences and overcrowding them is because the taxpayers are putting their money into it and they receive a profit for every inmate. It's not right for an individual to receive a ten year sentence to prison for a ounce of marijuana, or another drug when they've never committed a violent offense in their life. -RW003
I understand why mandatory minimums are a thing, we cannot have some of these bias judges sentencing one individual more than the other just because he/or she does not like the color of his skin or their gender. With that said, mandatory minimums are causing people with completely different motives to be serving the same sentence when one of them will learn their lesson in a couple of years while the other will go right back to what got them behind bars in the first place. Though we all have our underlying biases, there has to be some way of putting our judges through some kind of “bias catcher” that makes them and their peers aware of these biases and so we can decide whether they are fit for the job of sentencing the different ethnicities and being able to give them the correct amount of punishment based on the other aspects of the offenders’ life. -NOsaints003
I agree. The criminal justice system doesn't understand when to look at the bigger picture. The only thing they look at is the gender and race because they are giving some people very little or some people more. When putting sentencing someone to prison they might either give them some type of "treatment" or just let them figure it out on their own. GoodVibes003
This article was a real eye opener because it shows that basically they are sending first time offenders to prison for nearly a decade because of a little amount of crack cocaine or powder. When the offenders case goes through the court for that very little amount it is just assumed that they are "dangerous to society" and that they are the ones who have the longer sentence while the ones who are carrying more are getting less time and not be rehabilitated in the long run. It's not so much of the drug that is the problem it is more of the race of the offender. In the article it states "Racism undermines the justice process from initial stop to sentence, and 60 percent of those incarcerated are people of color. Rates of illiteracy, addiction, and mental illness are disproportionately high." For example, if I were to get caught with just a little bit of coke and let's say I was rich and literally snorted coke the court would just tell me to go complete a program at rehab and just be on my way, but if I was African American and poor rehab wouldn't be an option it would most likely be just prison and get very little help. Like I said before it's not just about the crime that has been committed it's more of the race of the offender. Not only race only but for someone who as only sold a little here and there would be serving half of their life just because mainly they have to support either themselves or their family. It states from one of the offenders "Over a six-month spell in 2004, young father and aspiring college student DeJarion Echols sold crack cocaine in an effort to support his family and finance his education. Instead, he lost both, consigned to a stiff, two-decade term that moved his presiding judge to confess." Right their is a prime example about how these type of offenders are being treated if they only sold it here and there but not all the time. Really? Just over a little bit of drugs because apparently they are "dangerous to society". Our criminal justice system doesn't know when to give the right people mandatory minimums and when to finally give the last straw to the real offenders. GoodVibes003
mandatory minimums are very situational. you cant expect someone raised by two drug abusers to know any difference as they grow up. i think its a bit over the top to give a non violent person this huge sentence when they have never been in trouble before. the video we watched really drew me toward drug courts. i think rehab is an awesome thing. you can be taught how to live and how to cope with out drugs and you dont learn that in jail. jail might even cause more resentment and earn you some bad friends that will help you right down the wrong path again. some of these "minimum" sentences are pretty extreme to me. i dont think it takes someone 15 or 20 years to realize they messed up. chi003
Mandatory Minimums Sentences have taken it too far with the drug offenders because most of these criminals have non-violent offenses and no criminal records. The state incarceration rates for drug crimes have increased rapidly and it's costing the taxpayers $51 billions dollars to keep these drug offenders in federal prison for a ounce of marijuana, crack, or cocaine. There are way more serious crimes being committed like murder, rapes, white collar crimes, but the law is focusing more on drug offenders with non-violent offenses and locking them up for ten or more years in prison. Most of the time there is no [re]habilitation for these inmates who have addiction, mental illness, and illiteracy because prisons don't provide them with programs and treatment in order to stop their addiction and stay out of prison. Racism is an issue in the criminal justice system too because there are judges who base their biases on a certain race and give them a longer sentence than another race who committed the same crime. This reflects what we talked about in class about eliminating those biases views as a criminal justice major and being open-minded about other races because we will interact with people from different backgrounds. -RW003
This article kind of just made me mad. I think mandatory minimums are counterproductive. Like, yeah, great, we got these drug dealers off the street. Were they violet? In these cases, no. So, why are we giving them life sentences for LSD and decades to life for some crack rocks. You have got to be kidding me.. some of them, like the guy on LSD, definitely needed some psychiatric help, maybe had an addiction to the way he felt on LSD because it helped him escape his reality. If he had something like drug court, that's one less person who's life we are ruining and who is rotting away in prison for something that was basically harmless cool, he was building a dam. Who did that hurt?! Also, the guy selling to be able to go to college. Just as we have talked about in class, he was actually selling so he could go to college. He seemed to have decent jobs and be an intelligent man. The next man, selling crack to support a family. Was he violent? No. Was he an addict? No. BUT those mandatory minimums will get you everytime. I honestly think that, in some cases, it's not even a fair trade. Selling to try to help our family and now instead of helping your family or going to school, your going to waste away in prison until you basically just die. There HAS to be something that we can do so these people aren't just wasting away in prison because of some dumb mandatory minimums.. they need to be smacked upside the head, and given proper resources to help them find gainful employment, to help them maybe get their family out of poverty, etc. This is one of many reasons why I cannot wait to become a lawyer and work with like minded people, to help get rid of these laws, like the mandatory minimum laws, which I personally think are absolutely ridiculous. Lastly, I want to say that I love rolling Stones articles and this one was did not disappoint. I think it really demonstrated why we need to give the some discretion back to judges, so they aren't just sitting there with their hands tied..
Mandatory minimums are I think kind of defeating the purpose. Because its suppose to be for violent offenders and offenders who you would want to keep off the streets. But 9 times out of 10 there are non-violent offenders being locked up for a mandatory minimum sentence, that should not be serving a lengthy sentence. In this article he stated that "crack tough punishment routine: 5 years for crack rocks." Which was the sizes of sugar cubes. Even though crack is illegal and you should serve time for it. I think that you should serve at least 2 to 3 years then get placed into a rehab facility. To actually learn that drugs doesn't contribute to a successful life. Later on in the article he stated that, "Intended to ensure uniform discipline, these policies simply shifted discretion to prosecutors." So in other words they are putting all the pressure on the prosecutors, to determine if they should even take the case to court. Because probably the case that was presented to the prosecutor is most likely a non-violent offender who probably got arrested for the wrong reasons. What really caught my attention was that in 2011 He founded the country's first federal clemency clinic at the University of St. Thomas Minnesota. Which I think was really helpful for the criminal justice system. But if anyone asked me if I was against or for mandatory minimums, I would say both because in some ways it works and some it doesn't. Which I think needs to thoroughly taught in the police academy. On how to use your discretion in that situation.-K9003
ReplyDeleteIn my own opinion, I believe that there are lots of other roads ahead for offenders and that they can overcome their addiction. Drug addiction has a psychology to it that people even I would most likely never understand. They want to overcome their addiction though, and they would like to be better people for their family especially. Sending people to prison a long time only makes non violent offenders violent and they go back to jail just as everyone else that is violent. Poor people are a good example, its in their neighborhoods, its on the street to see people use substances and also in their own household. Substances are not healthy and we should teach our children how bad they are because they really can affect your life. sweetiesasha.mattiejackson.002
DeleteMandatory minimum sentences should be eliminated. Not everyone who does a crime has the same intentions. An example I’ve heard is: John is nineteen. His uncle asks him to take his guns with him so his wife doesn’t know he’s got them. John has a FOID card, so he’s legally able to have the shotgun in his vehicle. What John doesn’t know is that uncle Bob slipped his 9mm Ruger in the case before he handed it over to John. John gets stopped on the way home by a state trooper and the trooper confiscates the guns. Now John is getting in trouble for illegally obtaining the handgun and (just for example) is now sentenced to a minimum of ten years. On the flip side, Bubba is a Crips gang member. Having just put the hit out a week before for a Bloods member, he walks around the neighborhood wearing an AK47 on his back with a Glock 35 on his hip and a Beretta on his ankle, waiting for the rival gang to retaliate. Bubba has intentions on using his guns for bad, for killing people. Bubba gets the minimum mandatory sentence of ten years. Bubba and John both get the same sentences. The catch? John wasn’t intending to use the firearms in any way, he was transporting them. Minimum mandatory sentences need to go. Gators003
ReplyDeleteI think mandatory minimums need to be changed. I understand on why this all came about and it was to crack down on the drug issues in the U.S. It has clearly worked in some cases and clearly not worked in others. There is no since in having a young man that has never been caught selling drugs to be sentenced the same as a drug dealer that deals to just make money. So many young kid’s lives’ are over and have been ruined over these mandatory minimums. I am not saying that the sentence should be light, most of these people no right from wrong and should not get off lightly but there are many other ways to show them that this came get really bad and your life will be spent in jail if they keep it up and don’t stop.
ReplyDeleteGRUNT003
Mandatory minimums are a bad idea because they remove a high degree of judicial discretion. Instead of a judge being able to determine the proper sentence based on an offenders criminal history and current likelihood to re offend they have to give multiple years in prison due to drug possession. A better alternative to mandatory minimum sentencing could be to give a lesser punishment to an offender if they are able to give actionable evidence on the person they got the drugs from or the person who is in charge of the drug operation in the area. A first time drug offender is probably going to be somebody trying to make fast money or to be cool like his drug dealing peers. Locking up the knucklehead that thought selling drugs on a street corner or moving some from city to city won't do anything to stop the drug trade because the people bringing the real scourge are just going to find another knucklehead to use. If we really want to break the back of the drug trade we should aim higher on the chain to take out the people in charge of the drug operations instead of clogging prisons with young idiots who just wanted to have the nice car or look cool to the people in the gang they just joined. If we want to stop people from continuing to offend we should stop over punishing them and start showing them how much harm they're doing with the drugs they're running or selling. Maybe taking them to a maternity ward for babies born addicted to crack or making them talk to the grieving mother who's toddler was killed by stray bullets from a drug gang shootout. Relying on the general deterrence and incapacitation provided by lengthy prison sentences across the board is obviously too expensive and not effective in winning the war on drugs. CoolGuy003
ReplyDeleteThis article discuses mandatory minimums and how it has affected specific people. Mandatory minimums play a large role in the sentencing process of a case. The majority of mandatory minimums are in place to prevent the offenders with evil intent from re offending. A mandatory minimum places a specific sentence on a crime and will not allow the judge to punish below it. The article mainly discusses drugs and how the mandatory minimum does not give judges the ability to decide what the defendant actually deserves. The example we use in class is a perfect example that shows why mandatory minimums need to be changed to allow the judge to have more discretion. If a young adult in college is trying to pay for his school books by selling very small amounts of cocaine there is no reason to give him a mandatory minimum for his sentence. He is simply trying to afford an education and has no violent intentions. Another example would be with a group of irresponsible teenagers. These teenagers do not need 20 years in prison to get them straightened out for using cocaine once in their lives. I agree that mandatory minimums make it difficult for a judge to have discretion in a court room and they need to be removed to allow some fluctuation to the punishment. -Bulls003
ReplyDeleteThere is obviously a problem with our court system with mandatory minimum sentences. It is a new day and age a lot different from back when we had a war on drugs. Heavy sentence were issued out to first time offenders for m=possessing drugs. This is ridiculous and is the leading cause to why prisons and jails are so over populated. From working in the jail I see this every day. Most of the federal inmates that come into Peoria county jail are nonviolent drug offenders facing years behind bars. These sentences is something that needs to be changed in order to lower the booming prison and jail populations. I would not be surprised within the next 10 years that there will be an overhaul of the justice system and these charges will be lowered. All of these examples in this article are clear that things need to change. Max003
ReplyDeleteThe reason behind the why the federal prisons are incarcerating these non-violent drug offenders to long sentences and overcrowding them is because the taxpayers are putting their money into it and they receive a profit for every inmate. It's not right for an individual to receive a ten year sentence to prison for a ounce of marijuana, or another drug when they've never committed a violent offense in their life. -RW003
DeleteI understand why mandatory minimums are a thing, we cannot have some of these bias judges sentencing one individual more than the other just because he/or she does not like the color of his skin or their gender. With that said, mandatory minimums are causing people with completely different motives to be serving the same sentence when one of them will learn their lesson in a couple of years while the other will go right back to what got them behind bars in the first place. Though we all have our underlying biases, there has to be some way of putting our judges through some kind of “bias catcher” that makes them and their peers aware of these biases and so we can decide whether they are fit for the job of sentencing the different ethnicities and being able to give them the correct amount of punishment based on the other aspects of the offenders’ life. -NOsaints003
ReplyDeleteI agree. The criminal justice system doesn't understand when to look at the bigger picture. The only thing they look at is the gender and race because they are giving some people very little or some people more. When putting sentencing someone to prison they might either give them some type of "treatment" or just let them figure it out on their own. GoodVibes003
DeleteThis article was a real eye opener because it shows that basically they are sending first time offenders to prison for nearly a decade because of a little amount of crack cocaine or powder. When the offenders case goes through the court for that very little amount it is just assumed that they are "dangerous to society" and that they are the ones who have the longer sentence while the ones who are carrying more are getting less time and not be rehabilitated in the long run. It's not so much of the drug that is the problem it is more of the race of the offender. In the article it states "Racism undermines the justice process from initial stop to sentence, and 60 percent of those incarcerated are people of color. Rates of illiteracy, addiction, and mental illness are disproportionately high." For example, if I were to get caught with just a little bit of coke and let's say I was rich and literally snorted coke the court would just tell me to go complete a program at rehab and just be on my way, but if I was African American and poor rehab wouldn't be an option it would most likely be just prison and get very little help. Like I said before it's not just about the crime that has been committed it's more of the race of the offender. Not only race only but for someone who as only sold a little here and there would be serving half of their life just because mainly they have to support either themselves or their family. It states from one of the offenders "Over a six-month spell in 2004, young father and aspiring college student DeJarion Echols sold crack cocaine in an effort to support his family and finance his education. Instead, he lost both, consigned to a stiff, two-decade term that moved his presiding judge to confess." Right their is a prime example about how these type of offenders are being treated if they only sold it here and there but not all the time. Really? Just over a little bit of drugs because apparently they are "dangerous to society". Our criminal justice system doesn't know when to give the right people mandatory minimums and when to finally give the last straw to the real offenders. GoodVibes003
ReplyDeletemandatory minimums are very situational. you cant expect someone raised by two drug abusers to know any difference as they grow up. i think its a bit over the top to give a non violent person this huge sentence when they have never been in trouble before. the video we watched really drew me toward drug courts. i think rehab is an awesome thing. you can be taught how to live and how to cope with out drugs and you dont learn that in jail. jail might even cause more resentment and earn you some bad friends that will help you right down the wrong path again. some of these "minimum" sentences are pretty extreme to me. i dont think it takes someone 15 or 20 years to realize they messed up. chi003
ReplyDeleteMandatory Minimums Sentences have taken it too far with the drug offenders because most of these criminals have non-violent offenses and no criminal records. The state incarceration rates for drug crimes have increased rapidly and it's costing the taxpayers $51 billions dollars to keep these drug offenders in federal prison for a ounce of marijuana, crack, or cocaine. There are way more serious crimes being committed like murder, rapes, white collar crimes, but the law is focusing more on drug offenders with non-violent offenses and locking them up for ten or more years in prison. Most of the time there is no [re]habilitation for these inmates who have addiction, mental illness, and illiteracy because prisons don't provide them with programs and treatment in order to stop their addiction and stay out of prison. Racism is an issue in the criminal justice system too because there are judges who base their biases on a certain race and give them a longer sentence than another race who committed the same crime. This reflects what we talked about in class about eliminating those biases views as a criminal justice major and being open-minded about other races because we will interact with people from different backgrounds. -RW003
ReplyDeleteThis article kind of just made me mad. I think mandatory minimums are counterproductive. Like, yeah, great, we got these drug dealers off the street. Were they violet? In these cases, no. So, why are we giving them life sentences for LSD and decades to life for some crack rocks. You have got to be kidding me.. some of them, like the guy on LSD, definitely needed some psychiatric help, maybe had an addiction to the way he felt on LSD because it helped him escape his reality. If he had something like drug court, that's one less person who's life we are ruining and who is rotting away in prison for something that was basically harmless cool, he was building a dam. Who did that hurt?! Also, the guy selling to be able to go to college. Just as we have talked about in class, he was actually selling so he could go to college. He seemed to have decent jobs and be an intelligent man. The next man, selling crack to support a family. Was he violent? No. Was he an addict? No. BUT those mandatory minimums will get you everytime. I honestly think that, in some cases, it's not even a fair trade. Selling to try to help our family and now instead of helping your family or going to school, your going to waste away in prison until you basically just die. There HAS to be something that we can do so these people aren't just wasting away in prison because of some dumb mandatory minimums.. they need to be smacked upside the head, and given proper resources to help them find gainful employment, to help them maybe get their family out of poverty, etc. This is one of many reasons why I cannot wait to become a lawyer and work with like minded people, to help get rid of these laws, like the mandatory minimum laws, which I personally think are absolutely ridiculous. Lastly, I want to say that I love rolling Stones articles and this one was did not disappoint. I think it really demonstrated why we need to give the some discretion back to judges, so they aren't just sitting there with their hands tied..
ReplyDeleteSCGC003
Delete