What are the arguments against mandatory minimum sentencing laws? Name two from the paragragh below.
Mandatory Minimum Sentences: One-Size-Fits-All Justice

Mandatory minimum sentencing laws remove judicial discernment from the criminal justice system.
The United States incarcerates more of its citizens than any other country in the world, and more than half of all federal prisoners are put behind bars for nonviolent drug offenses. Many critics of the country's "dependency" on incarceration blame the problem on mandatory minimum sentencing laws. These laws, which exist on both the federal and sometimes state level, dictate the minimum sentence of incarceration that a judge can impose on individuals convicted of certain offenses in an effort to make sentencing "fair" for everyone. Some mandatory minimum sentences are imposed for first-time offenders with increasingly harsher sentences for second- and third-time offenders. While mandatory minimum sentences may reassure the public that all criminals are being held equally accountable for their offenses, opponents of these laws argue that they remove humanity from the criminal justice system, tying the hands of judges and preventing them from considering the unique circumstances surrounding the individual offender and his or her crime (in legal terms, these are called mitigating circumstances). This can lead to harsh punishments that even judges say outweigh the crime. Furthermore, some proponents of sentencing reform contend that mandatory minimum sentencing laws cost the taxpayers an exorbitant amount of money, cause prisons to become overcrowded, and fail to achieve their goal of increasing public safety.

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15-06-2018
Social Studies

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What are the arguments against mandatory minimum sentencing laws? Name two from the paragragh below.
Mandatory Minimum Sentences: One-Size-Fits-All Justice

Mandatory minimum sentencing laws remove judicial discernment from the criminal justice system.
The United States incarcerates more of its citizens than any other country in the world, and more than half of all federal prisoners are put behind bars for nonviolent drug offenses. Many critics of the country's "dependency" on incarceration blame the problem on mandatory minimum sentencing laws. These laws, which exist on both the federal and sometimes state level, dictate the minimum sentence of incarceration that a judge can impose on individuals convicted of certain offenses in an effort to make sentencing "fair" for everyone. Some mandatory minimum sentences are imposed for first-time offenders with increasingly harsher sentences for second- and third-time offenders. While mandatory minimum sentences may reassure the public that all criminals are being held equally accountable for their offenses, opponents of these laws argue that they remove humanity from the criminal justice system, tying the hands of judges and preventing them from considering the unique circumstances surrounding the individual offender and his or her crime (in legal terms, these are called mitigating circumstances). This can lead to harsh punishments that even judges say outweigh the crime. Furthermore, some proponents of sentencing reform contend that mandatory minimum sentencing laws cost the taxpayers an exorbitant amount of money, cause prisons to become overcrowded, and fail to achieve their goal of increasing public safety.

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MrDonovan MrDonovan · Answer 1 · 2018-06-29T00:56:14+02:00

Based on this excerpt, there are several different arguments to be made against mandatory minimum sentencing laws. These include:

1) Limits the judges ability to take into account unique circumstances- As it discusses in the excerpt, mandatory minimums leave the judges powerless in the sense that they cannot give a shorter sentence than the federally prescribed amount of years. Even if a judge wants to have a shorter sentence for a first time or second time offender of a non violent crime, he/she does not have the legal ability to do so.

2) Money- Mandatory minimums ensure that individuals are kept in the prison system for a significant amount of time. Considering that prisons are funded by tax payer money, this shows that this type of mandatory minimum policy we have right now will result in a lot of taxpayer money going towards jails rather than other areas of society.