The drug war's ongoing nightmare

An unpopular truth

[Reprinted from Issues & Views August 27, 2001]

This falls into the "How did things get this way?" category. We learn from the Cato Institute:

It bears emphasizing that most drug criminals are not violent criminals. Only 21 percent of drug prisoners sentenced in state systems in 1991 had even a single incident of criminal violence in their background. Seventy percent of drug prisoners in the federal system have no record of violence, while 10 percent have a record of minor violence. And half of all prisoners entering the federal system for drug crime are first-time offenders.

Two periods in American history have seen explosive growth in the federal prison population and federal funding of prisons. One period is the present. The other such period was the era of alcohol prohibition, during which the federal prison population more than quadrupled; by 1930-31, 68 percent of incoming prisoners were alcohol law violators (and another 5 percent were drug law violators).

As legislative bodies in the 1980s grew increasingly determined to prove that they were "doing something" in the war on drugs, mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses became common. The expectation was that mandatory minimums would reduce the availability of drugs by reducing the number of suppliers, but the expectation has not come true. What has come true is a living nightmare of barbaric punishment for small-time offenders, to the detriment of public safety.

Besides abolishing parole, the Sentencing Reform Act delegated to the U.S. Sentencing Commission broad discretion to create a body of sentencing guidelines that the federal courts would be required to follow. The guidelines have been fully operative in the federal courts for several years.

The sentencing guidelines have been criticized for their rigidity and severity. The defendant's personal characteristics are "not ordinarily relevant." That a person has been employed for the last 30 years, raised three children, and contributed thousands of volunteer hours to charity does not entitle her to any sentence reduction compared a person who has never held an honest job or done anything for the community other than contribute DNA to a string of illegitimate children.

- Excerpts from Prison Blues: How America's Foolish Sentencing Policies Endanger Public Safety, by David B. Kopel, Cato Policy Analysis No. 208. To read full report, click here.

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