Mandatory minimums suck all the opportunity for an individualized delivery of justice out of the CJS. The offender/defendant is the most vulnerable person in the pretrial and trial systems. They have many circumstances specific to their alleged crime. Mandatory minimums deny this vulnerable person any part of their human dignity in disregarding the unique facts of their case.
Mandatory minimums also over-punish many of its victims. They are part of the reason America has such a high incarceration rate. If longer sentences lowered crime, there could be a reason to keep them around. But, as we learned last week, they don’t.
Mandatory minimums are especially troubling because we have a judicial branch built for hearing cases. Our justice system is built on the judicial branch, not the legislative. It’s only in the case of mandatory minimums that the legislative branch steps over its boundaries and creates laws to monitor judges. It takes power away from the judge and gives more power to the prosecutor in plea bargaining. I’ll get into this in the next few weeks—-in the current CJS, prosecutors generally have too much power. Eliminating mandatory minimums would help lessen some of this power.
It’s not challenging to eliminate the minimums compared to other forms of criminal justice reform. They can go as easy as they came, but people must first be aware of their harm and willing to change.
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