The Effects Of Mandatory Sentencing On The United States...

The United States prison population has grown seven-fold over the past forty years, and many Americans today tend to believe that the high levels of incarceration in our country stem from factors such as racism, socioeconomic differences, and drugs. While these factors have contributed to the incarceration rate present in our country today, I argue that the most important reason our country has such a high incarceration rate is the policy changes that have occurred since the 1970s. During this time, the United States has enacted policy changes that have produced an astounding rise in the use of imprisonment for social control. These policy changes were enacted in order to achieve greater consistency, certainty, and severity and include sentencing laws such as determinate sentencing, truth-in-sentencing, mandatory minimum sentencing, and three strikes laws (National Research Council 2014). Furthermore, I argue that mandatory sentencing has had the most significant effect on the incarc eration rate. The political turmoil and changing social climate of the 1960s contributed to the policies enacted in 1970s through the 1990s that significantly changed America’s criminal justice system. The political and social climate during the 1960s was tumultuous, defined by events such as Woodstock, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, and John and Bobby Kennedy, riots at the Democratic National Convention, and Vietnam War protests. At this time in our nation’s history, the World War IIShow MoreRelatedThe Effects Of Mandatory Minimum Sentencing On The United States Essay1877 Words   |  8 Pages People in The United States have been affected by the prison system, it has saved many lives, but on the other hand, people have prosecuted for minor crimes, to end up spending a lot of time in jail, which breaks apart families for far too long, it also creates a big rift between the people of this fine nation and their distrust of the law. Back in the 1980s, Preside nt Ronald Reagan has issued a law that has cut funding for the mental institutions in the United states as called the deinstitutionalizationRead MoreMandatory Minimum Sentences Imposed By Statute865 Words   |  4 Pagesvarious states across the nation, where there are far too many occurrences where individuals have been convicted of crimes and subjected to unfair mandatory sentencing. â€Å"Mandatory minimum sentencing laws require binding prison terms of a particular length for people convicted of certain federal and state crimes† (Famm, n.d.). â€Å"Mandatory minimum sentences imposed by statute are intended to achieve consistency in sentencing at the expense of individual consideration of the contextual sentencing factors†Read MoreCriminal Sentencing Essay1114 Words   |  5 Pagesdecades, but has been regulated by legislature since 1984. Discretion by definition is the authorization of deciding as one thinks fit, absolutely or within limits (Ntanda, 1999). Ind eterminate sentencing, traditionally, has afforded judges considerable discretion over the resolve of criminal sentencing. â€Å"While such discretion theoretically allows judges to tailor sentences to the circumstances of individual crimes and criminals, thereby achieving a sort of ex post fairness, it also permits variationRead MoreThe Federal Mandatory Minimum Sentencing978 Words   |  4 PagesIn today’s society crimes in the United State are growing each day, and the major aspect of the U.S criminal justice system is the punishment imposed on those who committed crimes in our communities. One method of sentencing criminals was the establishment of the mandatory minimum sentencing. During the early days of the republic, specific sentences were carried out for certain crime and early mandatory sentences the forms of punishment used at the time stretched from ducking stools/cucking stoolsRead MoreMandatory Sentencing For Minor Drug Offences957 Words   |  4 Pages Sinc e 1971, the United States has been on a war against drugs. Yet four decades and one trillion dollars later, we are still fighting this war (Branson). All that we have to show for this war is drugs running rampant and tons of citizens incarcerated. Mandatory sentencing for minor drug offences should be overturned due to overflowing prisons, damaging families, and the scare tactic it was created to be has failed. Due to mandatory sentencing for minor drug offences, the American prison systemRead MoreThe Mandatory Minimum Sentencing Laws1613 Words   |  7 PagesCurrent mandatory minimum sentencing laws are in dire need of reform. A mandatory minimum sentence is a court decision where judicial discretion is limited by law. As a result, there are irrevocable prison terms of a specific length for people convicted of particular federal and state crimes. As of January 2014, more than 50 percent of inmates in federal prisons are serving time for drug offenses, and more than 60 percent of people incarcerated are racial and ethnic minorities. The use of safetyRead MoreAbolishing Mandatory Minimum Sentencing On The United States1690 Words   |  7 PagesAbolishing Mandatory Minimum Sentencing in the United States EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The concept of mandatory minimum sentencing has been plaguing the justice system of the United States of America for too many years and therefore must be abolished. If mandatory minimum sentencing were to be done away with, then the criminal justice system could finally start to bring desperately needed change to itself and start to get back to where it needs to be; a system that takes people with a problem andRead MoreMandatory Minimum Sentences For Nonviolent Drug Crimes Essay1644 Words   |  7 PagesMandatory Minimum Sentences For the vast majority of crimes committed in the United States, the fate of those who have been found guilty is left in the hands of a judge, after a trial by jury. However, since the 1950’s the fate of nonviolent drug offenders has been shifted to the hands of the partisan prosecution with the expansion of mandatory sentencing. Mandatory minimum sentencing is a system which sets minimum jail sentences for crimes, which not even judges can overturn. In the decades afterRead MoreThe Concept Of Mandatory Sentencing1096 Words   |  5 PagesThe concept of mandatory sentencing is a relatively new idea in the legal field. It was first introduced in 1951 with the Boggs Act, and it made simple marijuana possession a minimum of two to ten years with a $20,000 fine. This was eventually repealed by Congress in 1970, but mandatory sentences came back with the passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. Since then, the scope and presence of mandatory sentencing has only grown, especially mandatory sentences for drug related offenses. RecentlyRead MoreMandatory Minimum Sentences For Nonviolent Drug Related Offences1031 Words   |  5 PagesMandatory minimum sentences are the backbone of a racially unjust, overpopulated, and overpriced criminal justice system. The Smarter Sentencing Act is a bill that aims to reduce the mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug related offences. â€Å"The United States has five percent of the world’s population, and twenty five percent of the world’s prisoners. Our prison population has grown eight hundred percent in the last thirty years, mostly because of changes in state and federal sentencing