REDUCE MANDATORY MINIMUM SENTENCING

Every Friday night at 2 a.m. at Washington University, many drunken
undergraduates are eating at Bear's Den.

From the fryer, the pasta line or everyone's favorite, the Mexican
station, students have returned from the fraternities and are eager
to put something hot and fattening into their mouths.

Occasionally, a student will eat without paying, unstopped by the
tired B & D employees protecting Bon Appetit's meal point
establishment, thereby stealing from the school and its contractors.

It's not hard to imagine. Two friends arrive at the Den, one wanting
mozzarella sticks and the other wanting a quesadilla. The Mexican
line is long, the fryer is not and before long, the sticks man has
finished his last bit of fried cheese while his friend's quesadilla
has only just begun frying. If caught, the sticks man may be forced
to pay the cost of his mozzarella sticks, or get kicked out of Bear's
Den, or both.

In other words, the punishment is minimal (possibly even too lenient)
and the offender receives little if anything in the way of harsh consequences.

Seventy-five miles south of Bear's Den, someone else steals a donut.
Not a Wash. U. student or graduate, and not at a Wash. U.-owned/Bon
Appetit-managed eatery, but a normal American man robs a Missouri
convenience store of one round pastry. If caught, he pays the cost of
the donut, is kicked out of the store or both, or is awarded a
30-year prison sentence. According to the offender in this actual
case, he didn't even eat it.

Welcome to the world of mandatory minimum sentencing, a judicial
phenomenon that has gripped the United States and other countries in
a politically misguided effort to crack down on crime.

These laws take common sense out of the courtroom, forcing judges to
prescribe minimum prison terms for offenses of all kinds, from
assault to theft to drug possession, often based on the offender's
previous criminal record.

Well intentioned, but often with powerful negative effects, these
laws have caught in their grip not only the seasoned drug dealers for
whom they are designed, but also petty thieves and drug users who
meet their loose set of criteria. This often provides low-level,
often non-violent offenders with punishments that don't match their crimes.

Such was the case of Arizona high school teacher Morton Berger, who
was sentenced by an Arizona court to 200 years in prison (the minimum
allowable by state law) for downloading 20 images of child
pornography. In this case, each downloaded image gave Berger a
minimum of 10 years of imprisonment, which were assigned to run
consecutively. Berger received, in effect, a harsher penalty then he
would have had he actually raped or abused a child. The Arizona
Supreme Court upheld the case and in February of this year, the U.S.
Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal.

This spirit of punishment may find yet its next victim in the
Missouri convenience store robber, whose violent robbing of the donut
(allegedly, he pushed a convenience store employee on the way out)
may land him three decades of prison time, as his "strong-arming" of
the worker and his previous criminal record combine, in the eyes of
minimum sentencing law, to a punishment that grossly overstates the
social injury of his crime.

Mandatory minimum sentencing laws, although a well intentioned
political tool for candidates looking to stand strong against crime,
often have deleterious effects, including the over-punishment of mild
crimes, a principle forbidden, at least in spirit, in the Eighth
Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits "cruel and unusual punishment."