MANDATORY MINIMUM PRISON SENTENCES DON'T WORK

Ah, the joy of opening the mail box. Usually a bill or two waiting,
the occasional government cheque, even the possibility of a postcard
from a distant cousin visiting Pago Pago.

I didn't get any cheque, and surprisingly no bills. Not even that
postcard from Pago Pago. What I did get though, was a pamphlet from
local Conservative Terence Young.

Alright Terence, I'm ready to listen, so lay it on me baby. So I
opened the pamphlet and first off: Accountability in Government.

Alright Mr. Young, no arguments there. Safer Streets was next with
the first bullet (no pun intended) being "Mandatory minimum sentences
for crimes involving guns." Oh no Terence, please tell me this was a
misprint? The dreadful MMS?

You may be unaware Mr. Young, but our American counterparts already
impose "mandatory minimum sentences" for drug offences, and the
effects have been devastating.

In fact, many states are proposing legislation to abolish mandatory
minimum sentencing.

A recent study done by the American Bar Association, Justice Kennedy
Commission went on to urge "a fundamental change of course toward
less reliance on incarceration and greater attention to more
effective alternatives.

The system is broken

"Now we need to get smarter. We can no longer sit by as more and more
people -- particularly in minority communities -- are sent away for
longer and longer periods of time while we make it more and more
difficult for them to return to society after they serve their time.
The system is broken. We need to fix it."

The report also concluded that the "many get-tough approaches to
crime don't work and some, such as mandatory minimum sentences for
small-time drug offenders, are unfair and should be abolished.

"Laws requiring mandatory minimum prison terms leave little room to
consider differences among crimes and criminals.

"More people are behind bars for longer terms, but it is unclear
whether the country is safer as a result."

The Justice Fellowship, an "online community of Christians working to
reform the criminal justice system" also agreed, noting that
"Mandatory sentencing laws have proven to be ineffective," as "they
limit a judge's ability to consider the actual facts of the case.

"The mandatory sentencing policy is also the least cost-effective."

The problem is so frustrating that scores of federal judges have
refused to hear drug cases in protest of mandatory minimum sentencing
laws and that Supreme Court Justices and a Chief Justice, all of whom
are Republican appointees "have also found mandatory minimums to be a
flawed sentencing system," and even going as far as calling them
"imprudent, unwise and often an unjust mechanism."

A Conservative criminologist John DiIulio, once a backer of long
mandatory sentences, recently wrote in support of the abolition of
MMS, going on to say that "With mandatory minimums, there is no real
suppression of the drug trade, only episodic substance-abuse
treatment of incarcerated drug-only offenders, and hence only the
most tenuous crime-control rationale for imposing prison terms
mandatory or otherwise on any of them."

Not only have they been ineffective in stopping drug crime,
"mandatory minimums also disproportionately affect minorities."

The average drug sentence for African/Americans is now 49 per cent
higher than sentences for the same offense for whites.

Finally, the most fitting, was by the Elizabeth Fry Society. They
noted that "The new mandatory minimum sentence of four years
imprisonment for offences involving a firearm provides an example, as
do numerous Private Member's Bills that propose new minimum sentences
for offences and offenders that have been the subject of
media-induced panic. The new mandatory minimum sentence was
introduced for offences involving weapons with little public debate
or justification, as it was buried in the gun control legislation. It
was intended to appease gun owners by punishing severely the "real
criminals" - those who use guns in the course of committing other crimes.

"These minimum sentences, just like the mandatory minimum for murder,
are essentially politically expedient solutions to grave social
problems that have moral as well as legal implications."

Their No. 1 recommendation?

"Abolish the mandatory minimum sentence of life imprisonment for
first and second degree murder, and all other mandatory minimum sentences."

Fighting the war on drugs

You see Mr. Young, the U.S. has been fighting a "war on drugs" for
over 20 years. Since then, drugs are of higher quality, are cheaper
on the streets and the rate of incarceration in the United States
(702 inmates per 100,000 residents) continues to be the highest in
the world. Needless to say, they have been fighting a losing battle.
Drugs, guns, gangs it is all connected. It should not be a shock to
see that gangs + drugs = GUNS.

As Sterling Johnson, Jr., a special narcotics prosecutor for New York
City once wrote, "Drugs are to organized crime what gasoline is to
the automobile."

As long as we keep drugs on the black market, we will continue to
give them a means to buy things such as weapons. The time to stop
being politically correct when dealing with drugs has long passed,
it's time to actually start changing a failed system. A failed war.

I'll leave you with the words of the Justice Kennedy Commission's
chair, Steven Saltzburg:

"For too long we have focused almost exclusively on locking up
criminals. We also need to look at the other side of the coin: what
happens when they get out. We have to remember that roughly 95 per
cent of the people we lock up eventually get out. Our communities
will be safer and our corrections budgets less strained if we better
prepared inmates to successfully re-enter society without returning
to a life of crime."

VON JEPPESEN