Essay On Mandatory Sentencing

I believe that by making some changes to the mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines would in the long run make our justice system better able to serve the people. I know many of you, like I believe there should be no change to the mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines, but have you or I for that matter really thought through what that means for people like Lee Wollard or Trina Garnett? Lee Wollard didn’t hurt the young man, he protected his daughter and family, yet is spending twenty years behind bars because he fired a warning shot into his home. Trina Garnett was an abused teenager with a mental illness that needed medical care not sent to prison. Now imagine yourself in Lee Wollard’s position. You do a good deed and take in a young man into your home because he has nowhere to go. Soon after the young …show more content…
Do you still think that we shouldn’t make a change to the mandatory sentencing guidelines? Mandatory sentencing guidelines have their place in the justice system, but they need to have shades of gray written into them and not just black and white. “In 1984, Congress enacted the most sweeping and dramatic reform of federal sentencing -- the Sentencing Reform Act. The Act was part of the Comprehensive Crime Control Act, whose purpose was to address the problem of.” (ussc.com). This was an attempt by Congress, with good intentions to address the crime issue in the United States, but good intentions as well all know are not the basis for making good policies. The congress made an attempt to address the problem of crimes, but they didn’t look at the whole picture and the effects it would have on people like Lee Wollard and Liliana Segura. Even though we support mandatory sentencing, can we not also agree that there needs to be a change made to the mandatory sentencing guidelines? Please don’t be blind or deaf to justice as one day it may be one of us behind the bars for something that doesn’t warrant a twenty year sentence just because