Minimum Mandatory Sentencing

United States prisons are overcrowded. There is a huge problem with persons who commit minor offenses being handed major punishments. This problem has been going on for decades. Everyday individuals are being incarcerated for less severe infractions of the law and their whole lives are being changed with the drop of a gavel. There is a bias in our criminal justice system that people have been trying to cover up for generations. Rather than rehabilitating and helping to educate those who violate laws and statutes, our courts are incarcerating these people and, basically, forgetting they ever existed. Based on my research, some officials even make sure no one ever remembers who these people actually were and instead make them statistics lying …show more content…
It sets a precedent for new offenders and may offer a deterrent to those that consider their actions before commiting a crime. A minimum sentence guideline allows for a judge to not have to rely on gut instinct, personal consensus, but rather be confined to set procedures and guidelines set forth in local, state, and federal statutes. According to an article in the American Criminal Law Review the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 was intended to eliminate unwarranted sentencing disparity by establishing a "comprehensive and consistent statement of the Federal law of sentencing, setting forth the purposes to be served"(Hofer and Allenbaugh 39). The journal goes on to explain that with the new law came a new ideology for imposing criminal sentences intended to create a consistent environment among courts. With this new consistency everyone is being treated in the same way when it comes to punishment. The punishments are no different from one offender to the next. Judges are imposing the sentences that they are mandated to give and offenders are still making the choice to re-offend when no longer in