How Do Criminals Reduce Nonviolent Crimes?

Mandatory minimum laws, which set different minimum sentences for crack and powder cocaine possession, are policies that are inflexible, “one-size-fits-all” sentencing laws that undermine the constitutional principle that the punishment should fit the crime and undermine the judicial power to punish an individual in context of the specific circumstances. Similarly, 3-strikes laws also ignores judicial discretion. Truth-in-sentencing policies refer to policies created to have a convict serve the full sentence, regardless of good behavior or other deterrent. These policies are created to only incapacitate people—more specifically minorities—not to rehabilitate them. More people in jail and longer sentences are not helping ensure public safety.

This paper explores several different sources that cover some aspect of how the United States Penal System went from the Rehabilitative Model to a punitive system. Bryan Stevenson and Betsy Matthews have written about how drug enforcement and the “War on Drugs” are responsible. Yeoman Lowbrow’s analysis of the crime rate and statistics will be considered alongside Matthews’ analysis of the different political parties’ changing views. The change in United States sentencing practices as a result will also be considered. In the conclusion a brief summary of a predicted future will be

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 incarceration rate.

States have choices in the means by which to promote community well-being, protect public safety and curb the drug trade. Over the last two decades, the choice was imprisonment. Prison is, of course, a legitimate criminal sanction, but it should be used as a last resort – i.e. used only for serious crimes -- and the length of the sentence should be commensurate with the conduct and culpability of the offender. Unfortunately, too many states have opted instead for sentencing policies that mandate long sentences even for nonviolent, low-level drug offenders. In her article, Patrice Gaines, the author of Laughing in the Dark: from Colored girl to woman of a color-A journey from prison to power, argues that it is necessary to provide restorative

The United States’ prison population is currently number one in the world. As a nation that proclaims freedom for citizens, the United States houses more than one million more persons than Russian and almost one million more persons than China. Currently, the United States makes up five percent of the world’s population and imprisons twenty-five percent of the world’s inmate population. Drug offenders who committed no act of violence make up a large portion of the inmates in the United States. County, State, and Federal prisons are so over populated that the private sector has opened up corporate facilities to house convicted persons. The cost each year to hold a person rises, placing larger financial demands on the judicial system. The Judicial System of the United States should reevaluate the sentencing guidelines for non-violent drug offenders to alleviate the high number of people in the prison system.

The incarceration rate in America is high. In fact, the highest in the world (Zuckerman, 2014). But should it be? According to Bibas (2015), “Though America is home to only about one-twentieth of the world’s population, we house almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners.” (para. 1). America, it seems, in its ‘War on Drugs’, has been incarcerating criminals, even non-violent drug offenders, at a high rate. As more offenders are being incarcerated, more stories are being written, including horror stories about what goes on behind prison walls. Considering the nature of some of the crimes committed by inmates, and being mixed in with the violent criminals, non-violent offenders have no place in this hell. Because of overcrowding, abuse of the inmates, and the lack

With regard to solutions, considerable attention has been paid to the federal prison system. Between 1980 and 2013, the federal prison population increased by 790% from 24,640 to 219,298. Since peaking, the number of federal prisoners has lowered to 190,452 today. The decline is the result of criminal justice reform efforts in the past few years, such as former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s modification of the Department of Justice’s charging policies in 2010 and the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s passage of Amendment 782 (“drugs minus two”) in 2014. In spite of their moderate success, such responses have failed to

In his chapter on “Assessing the Prison Experiment,” he explained that the increase of crime rate is not the sole reason that mass incarceration occurs, and it was also because the courts and the legislature did indeed became “tougher” on offenders (Currie 14). Currie discussed the circumstances of the war on drugs, which was launched by President Richard Nixon. He indicates that the incarceration rate and sentence longevity were increased dramatically since the beginning of the war on drugs. Some of these offenders were given a sentence for more than ten years without the possibility of parole, which is taking away any chance of the prisoner being released before the completion of his or her sentence. Locking people up is a failed attempt to descend the crime rate, and the adoption of mandatory minimum sentencing law is the root of mass incarceration. The government should reconsider the current sentencing laws and reform the correctional system in order to solve the current mass incarceration problem. Furthermore, establishing more community-based programs for youth offenders and initiating early release programs are excellent alternatives to resolve the issue of mass incarceration from both long-term and short-term perspectives, respectively.

The “War on Drugs” established that the impact of incarceration would be used as a weapon to combat the illegal drug problem in this country. Unfortunately, this war against drugs has fallen disproportionately on black Americans. “Blacks constitute 62.6% of all drug offenders admitted to state prisons in 1996, whereas whites constituted 36.7%. The drug offender admissions rate for black men ranges from 60 to an astonishing 1,146 per 100,000 black men. In contrast, the white rate begins at 6 and rises no higher than 139 per 100,000 white men. Drug offenses accounted for nearly two out of five of all black admissions to state prisons (Human Rights Watch, 2000).” The disproportionate rates at which black drug offenders are sent to prison originate in racially disproportionate rates of arrest.

The following pages will explore the issue of illegal drug use as it relates to tougher sentencing guidelines in an effort to determine whether stronger sentences are keeping dangerous criminals off the streets and reducing the use of illegal drugs in the US.

Prison overcrowding is a major problem in our criminal justice system and it continues to be a hotly debated topic as to how we should address the problem. One of the main reasons our prison systems have a problem with overcrowding is drugs. More specifically, the "war on drugs" started by President Reagan in 1982 brought a dramatic increase to the number of people put behind bars for drug offences. Mandatory minimum sentencing and truth in sentencing are two policies which have sent drug offenders to prison and kept them there for longer periods of time. The continuing crusade against drugs has apprehended hundreds of thousands of suspects who spend millions on drugs but the cost to incarcerate these non-violent offenders exceeds billions of dollars and much of that money is coming from the taxpayers ' pockets. One way to address this problem is to reverse the current trend of putting first time, non-violent drug offenders in prison and instead sentence these offenders to boot camp and counselling combined with family support.

President Obama made headlines in January when he granted clemency to roughly 2000 inmates, mostly convicted of drug-possession crimes, The clemency pardoned the prisoners from their mandatory minimums in an effort to rebuild their lives. Mandatory minimums are the required amount of time that convicted felons have to serve for the crime they are guilty of, which is influenced by the type and frequency of the crime. Obama’s action is representative of the increasing criticism of mandatory minimums, due to the belief that instead of creating a safer landscape, the minimums only increase prison populations. Mandatory minimums are detrimental due to their influence on society’s perception of prisoners, psychological toll on prisoners, and destruction of prisoners’ relationships; many propose alternatives to the mandatory minimum such as restoring sentencing power to judges and creating rehabilitation programs as an alternative to minimum sentencing.

The Editorial Board utilizes statistics to emphasize that granting pardons to those in prison is necessary to diminish the staggering numbers in the prison population. President Obama collaborates with the Justice Department to reduce those in prison by reviewing cases repeatedly. According to the article, “Mr. Obama has now shortened or ended the sentences of more than 1,000 prisoners.” However, many inmates deserve to be released, and

President Barack Obama has recently commuted 46 prisoners before his historic visit to a federal prison in Oklahoma. Most of the prisoners he commuted are drug offenders. In a video posted on Facebook, Obama demanded that the punishment of the commuted prisoners was overloaded and overwhelming. In his language- these prisoners are not “hardened criminals,” so “their punishments didn’t fit the crime.”

The point of contention of the Criminal Justice System draws from the correctional services like justice, drug, human rights, equality, and inclusion. Some suggest that the criminal system is too weak, but the majority says the system is tough enough. Reform on drug-related sentencing is probably the most agreeable point for larger debates on criminal justice reform, and of late this theme appears to have gained considerable degree of bipartisan traction in the House of Representatives of late (Cohen, 2017).