Is It Time For America to Repeal Mandatory Minimum Sentencing Laws?

In 1986 Congress enacted mandatory minimum sentencing laws, forcing judges to deliver fixed sentences to individuals convicted of a crime, regardless of culpability or other mitigating factors. Since the initiation of mandatory minimum sentencing laws prisons have been filled at an alarming rate with drug offenders and non-violent criminals. More prisoners are locked away for drug violations than all violent crimes combined, and more than 80 percent of the increase in the federal prison population from 1985 to 1995 is due to drug convictions. (http://www.drugpolicy.org/) With prison overcrowding at an all time high and no real solutions presented, is it time for America to repeal mandatory minimum sentencing laws?

There is a portion of society who believes mandatory minimums inflict punishment far too severe for first-time offenders and petty drug peddlers. Critics acknowledge the problems caused by the drug trade, but contend that punishments are often too severe. According to the United States Sentencing in 1992 alone, more than 3,000 drug offenders who were not involved in violence and had no previous record were sent to federal prison for terms of at least five years. (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html) Defenders of mandatory sentencing claim that the drug trade itself is inherently violent and that America needs to be “tough on crime.” And if overcrowded prisons have become a problem, they offer a solution: build more prisons. (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html)

Mandatory minimum sentencing laws came about because of the major crack epidemic that was running rampantly through America’s streets in the 1980’s. When these laws were established by congress it seemed as if they would be a sufficient remedy to control the epidemic. However, through the years these laws have been under more and more scrutiny. The laws have not proved to be a successful deterrent to crime and are in fact a major reason the prisons are overcrowded.

Though defenders of mandatory minimum feel that we need to be “tough on crime” and criminals should be incarcerated, there is one major issue, we simply don’t have anywhere to place them. Petty drug dealers and first time offenders shouldn’t be incarcerated with rapists and murderers, they should be rehabilitating to try to better themselves. In prison many of these petty offenders are learning how to become more efficient criminals and are not receiving the help they need.

The crisis of overcrowded prisons across America is only on the rise. We need to find a better solution to not only decrease the number of prisoners in jail, but also the frequency of recidivism. In this case, a feasible solution would be abolishing the mandatory sentencing laws for first first-time offenders time and offering comprehensive rehabilitation and counseling.

FIRE IN OVERCROWDED PRISON RESULTS IN FATALITIES

Prison overcrowding not only takes away from successful rehabilitation and quality of life, but it also drastically reduces the safety of prisoners. Three years ago in Higuey, Dominican Republic the harsh reality of the danger of an overpopulated prison was seen firsthand. “A battle broke out in a cell known as Vietnam, the authorities said. Shots were fired and punches flew. Mattresses, machetes and other objects sailed through the air before a burst of flame came, then torrents of black, choking smoke” (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/09/international/americas/09dominican.html). This melee occurred in a severely overcrowded cell and took the lives of 136 prisoners. The cell was built to house no more than 40 prisoners. “Human rights workers here and abroad say prison overcrowding in the Dominican Republic is among the worst in the hemisphere” (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/09/international/americas/09dominican.html).
The prison was first constructed to hold 80 prisoners but on the day of the tragic fire there were at least 426 prisoners in captivity.

Tragic events such as this should be a forewarning of how ghastly it can be on the inside of an overcrowded prison. One person’s actions can start a chain of events that can abruptly get very dangerous. In this case the situation became dangerous because rival gangs who were waging war over the drug trade set their bedding ablaze. One survivor stated that “some died in a stampede to escape the flames and some died of smoke inhalation” (http://chinadaily.com/cn/english/doc/2005-03/08/ ). “The fire burned everything fast in a matter of seconds or minutes,” said Pedro Rojas Morillo, the governor of La Altagracia Province. “There was no hope” (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/09/international/americas/09dominican.html). Events such as this display the danger of overcrowded prisons and the importance of relieving prisons of overcrowding. In addition to the lack of rehabilitation and job training opportunities, overcrowded prisons make conditions extremely dangerous. Fights, and riots are more likely to occur in congested prisons because in an overcrowded, frightening and stressful situation people trend to become exceedingly irritable and are always “watching their back.” This stress and irritability can cause paranoia, which can lead to confrontations. These confrontations can ultimately become deadly and out of control. Another downfall to an overpopulated prison is that criminals feel they need to join a gang in order to survive. You are not likely to survive in a hostile situation if you are a loner. Gangs ultimately battle each other, which can end in tragedy as was exhibited by the skirmish in the Dominican Republic. All of these conditions escalate in overcrowded prisons because people cannot stay to themselves and have to adapt to gang life.

Prisoners are detained to pay their debt to society for their wrongdoings, but being put in an overcrowded and potentially deadly environment is not fair or equal punishment. If the prison in the Dominican Republic held the amount of inmates it was built to accommodate, hundreds of lives would have been saved. Instead, this crowded prison was a death trap for at least 136 prisoners who were caught in a fiery blaze with no chance to survive, rehabilitate, and rejoin society as productive individuals.

Prison Tent Camps: A Short Term Solution to a Long Term Problem

Tent City in Maricopa County, Arizona

Can you imagine sleeping under tents in the middle of a scolding hot desert while eating bologna sandwiches everyday? No, I am not talking about the soldiers in Iraq. I’m referring to what many prisoners go through every day in Maricopa County, Arizona. One of the most controversial yet most backed sheriffs in the nation runs this “tent city” prison. “For the Maricopa county sheriff (Joe Arpaio) who opened the nation’s largest tent prison in 1993, saving taxpayers pennies matters more than comforting convicted felons.” (http://www.cnn.com/US/9907/27/tough.sheriff/).

With taxpayers across the nation dishing out more and more money every year for the overflow of prisoners entering our overcrowded system, alternatives such as tent prisons may become more of a trend. In the summer of 2006 a 65 million dollar “tent city” was built in Raymondville, Texas to be used as an immigration detention facility due to lack of space in the prisons. (http://realcostofprisons.org/blog/archives/2007/02/tent_city_in_te.html)

The advantage of these “tent prisons” is that taxpayers save money due to the cheaper up-keep, building expenses and electric expenses of these military camp-like structures. Supporters of tent prisons believe that criminals should pay for their crime and shouldn’t be awarded the amenities such as air conditioning and television. Sheriff Joe Arpaio has even gone as far as excluding coffee, which he claimed saved $150,000 a year. On top of this exclusion, “Arpaio makes inmates pay for their meals, which some say are worse than those of the guard dogs.
Canines eat $1.10 worth of food a day, the inmates 90 cents."
(http://www.cnn.com/US/9907/27/tough.sheriff/)

Critics of tent prisons deem the conditions in these prisons too ruthless. In Arizona temperatures have been known to reach all the way to 120 degrees Fahrenheit. In Raymondville, Texas at tent city, “a group of women huddled in a recreation yard on a 40-degree day with a 25-mph wind. They had no blanket, no sweat shirt, no jacket, officers were wearing earmuffs while detainees were outside for an hour with short sleeved polyester uniforms and shower shoes and not necessarily socks."
(http://realcostofprisons.org/blog/archives/2007/02/tent_city_in_te.html)

Conditions such as 120-degree weather in Arizona and 40-degree weather with flailing winds in Texas are reasons that critics call these jails merciless. One of the critics, Eleanor Eisenborg of the ACLU stated, “Sheriff Arpaio has conditions in his jail that are inhumane, and he’s proud of it.” (http://www.cnn.com/US/9907/27/tough.sheriff/)

Critics also are weary of tent jails because even though the Maricopa County jail is saving money on everyday amenities, they have been “hit with hundreds of inmate-related lawsuits, and ordered to pay millions in legal damages.” (http://www.cnn.com/US/9907/27/tough.sheriff/)

While prisons across America are overpopulated and legislators, lawmakers and the criminal justice system are all struggling to find a way to accommodate this huge influx of prisoners, tent prisons are not much of a solution. Criminals should pay for what they have done but putting people outside in horrid conditions is not the way to accomplish this. Many of the people that stay in tent city jails are non-violent offenders who would be better served by being involved in some type of intermediate sanction such as probation and counseling. Placing these non-violent prisoners in an inhumane environment, without electricity, proper nutrition, and hygiene is not the correct way to rehabilitate and better equip them with the proper skill-set to transition back into society and a working profession. Desperate measures such as tent camps are only a short-term solution to a long-term problem and a better solution must be made to solve this ever-increasing problem.