Mandatory minimum sentences—laws that require binding prison terms for certain crimes—are one reason so many people are behind bars in the U.S. today.
Where did mandatory minimums come from?
In 1986, Len Bias was a 22-year-old student and basketball player at the University of Maryland. He was drafted by the Boston Celtics but never played a game. In June, Bias died of a cocaine overdose. It was widely—but mistakenly—reported that he overdosed on crack cocaine.
His death sparked a media frenzy and caught the attention of Congress. The Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations held a hearing on crack cocaine in July. Media outlets wrote story after story about “the crack cocaine epidemic.”
Members of Congress were motivated to act by political as well as public health concerns. Congressional Democrats saw this as an opportunity to “get tough on drugs” and respond to Republican criticism of being soft on crime. In October 1986, Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act to expand the so-called War on Drugs.
The law imposed mandatory sentences for cocaine possession. It also introduced the sentencing disparity between powder and crack cocaine, actually two forms of the same drug.
Under the new law, a person convicted of possessing 5 grams of crack cocaine would receive the same penalty (a prison sentence of at least 5 years) as a person possessing 500 grams of powder cocaine. This 100:1 sentencing ratio stood for more than 20 years. In 2010, Congress reduced the ratio to 18:1—a step in the right direction, but not far enough.
The legacy of mandatory minimums
Decades later, mandatory minimums have exponentially increased the U.S. prison population. Drug offenders now comprise more than half of the people in federal prison.
Reforming federal sentencing laws by reducing federal mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenders is critically important.
They are unfair: Mandatory minimums are “one size fits all” laws. They prevent judges from weighing individual circumstance in determining a consequence for the crime.
They are unjust: African Americans are 21 percent more likely to receive mandatory minimum sentences than white defendants and are 20 percent more likely to be sentenced to prison.
They are costly: Mandatory minimum sentences have exponentially increased the federal prison population. The federal Bureau of Prisons is operating at 40 percent over capacity, and the prison system consumes nearly a fourth of the Department of Justice’s entire budget.