Mandatory Sentences In Prisons

What are the drug sentences like here in America? Can they be too much? Not enough? Or sometimes maybe even a waste of our time, money, and resources? Do we focus too much on catching people who sell or use drugs rather than the people that are robbing other people, killing, or even raping? It has honestly turned in to such a big deal nowadays that the police only seem to worry about people with drugs. Granted, some drugs are very bad and those people should definitely be off the streets but not every drug is worth these people getting in trouble. Is it worth sending people that aren’t even involved with the drugs to jail for years just because they were associated with someone that was involved? And these people don’t even get the choice of …show more content…
Brenda ended up serving twelve years just because her aunt did all of that and she happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Due to mandatory sentences, though, she had to serve this time. Mandatory sentences have caused our prisons to become over populated with people who have committed little crimes and sometimes aren’t even bad people, costing the taxpayers a lot more money. The mandatory sentencing laws were mainly created for drug users or distributors. People accused of or guilty of drug offenses are about 60% of the federal prison populations, when in 1986 it was only 38%. (FAMM) Although, in most cases it’s not as big of a deal to use or possess the drugs, it can cause people to commit other crimes that are much worse. For instance, there’s a graph that shows people admitting to being under the influence of drugs or alcohol when they committed another crime and the percentages are pretty high. From about 24-36% of people admitted to being under the influence when committing a violent crime, about 30-40% when committing property crimes, and 37-60% were when committing another drug