There are 242 million adults in the US currently. That’s 242 million people living their life - getting married, working at their dream job, having children, buying their first house. 242 million people who, in this country, have the freedom to live whatever kind of life they want.
But what if I told you that, of those 242 million people, 1 in every 100 of them is imprisoned. They can’t see their family, or get a good job, or travel around their world. Instead, 1 in every 100 adults is locked inside a concrete box with little choice in the matter. They miss on an entire lifetime of opportunities due to unjust and undue laws. Imagine your life being snatched out of your very hands because of one, TINY, IRREVERSIBLE mistake you ever so wish you could take back..
Some people deserve this punishment. …show more content…
We have designed a system that allows an airplane hijacker to get less time in prison than a nonviolent drug offender.
The fault therein lies with a system of sentencing called mandatory minimums. Mandatory minimums cause people who are convicted of a certain crime to be punished with a certain number of years in prison regardless of circumstance. They are laws, stating the minimum amount of time one has to spend in prison for a certain crime. Possess a gun during said crime? Your time goes up. Overdue on taxes at the time? Your time increases even further.
These allow, at their most basic level, for the power of the criminal justice system to be taken out of the hands of judges and lawyers. Instead, the control is given to the senate and congress, two reputable but easily influenced groups that have no right to control the affairs of another branch of the government. Doing so is wrong and allows them to tip the scales of governmental power in their favor. This allows arbitrary conditions to determine the punishment, instead of the severity of the crime as would be
But what if I told you that, of those 242 million people, 1 in every 100 of them is imprisoned. They can’t see their family, or get a good job, or travel around their world. Instead, 1 in every 100 adults is locked inside a concrete box with little choice in the matter. They miss on an entire lifetime of opportunities due to unjust and undue laws. Imagine your life being snatched out of your very hands because of one, TINY, IRREVERSIBLE mistake you ever so wish you could take back..
Some people deserve this punishment. …show more content…
We have designed a system that allows an airplane hijacker to get less time in prison than a nonviolent drug offender.
The fault therein lies with a system of sentencing called mandatory minimums. Mandatory minimums cause people who are convicted of a certain crime to be punished with a certain number of years in prison regardless of circumstance. They are laws, stating the minimum amount of time one has to spend in prison for a certain crime. Possess a gun during said crime? Your time goes up. Overdue on taxes at the time? Your time increases even further.
These allow, at their most basic level, for the power of the criminal justice system to be taken out of the hands of judges and lawyers. Instead, the control is given to the senate and congress, two reputable but easily influenced groups that have no right to control the affairs of another branch of the government. Doing so is wrong and allows them to tip the scales of governmental power in their favor. This allows arbitrary conditions to determine the punishment, instead of the severity of the crime as would be