Mandatory Minimum Sentencing

The U.S. has more prisoners than any other country. With less than 5 percent of the world’s population, the U.S. houses about a fifth of all convicts, at a cost of some $80 billion a year. Mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes, immigration violations and other offenses have left American prisons filled with low-level offenders serving long terms. The nation’s federal inmate population more than doubled over the past two decades even as the number of violent crimes per capita declined by about 40 percent. Mandatory minimums came under pressure as the major U.S. political parties reached consensus that inflexible punishments take a toll on taxpayers, communities and families of the incarcerated. But the election to the presidency of Republican Donald Trump, who cast himself as a law-and-order candidate, has set back expectations that the penalties would be further loosened.

Trump’s nominee for attorney general, Senator Jeff Sessions, has argued against continuing to relax sentencing rules. A Trump administration is unlikely to continue a policy put in place in 2013 by then Attorney General Eric Holder blunting the impact of mandatory minimums; Holder instructed federal prosecutors to charge minor criminals with offenses so that the potential punishment matched the crime. President Barack Obama said in 2015 that long mandatory minimums should be shortened or eliminated. He stressed the disproportionate impact of the laws on racial minorities. Bills drawing bipartisan support were introduced in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives to eliminate minimums for certain drug offenses, expand eligibility for exemptions and allow federal courts to disregard the mandatory minimums when they conflict with general sentencing standards. Those standards take into account such factors as the seriousness of the crime and the offender’s specific role in it. Sessions opposed the proposals, dimming their prospects in a new Congress. A debate about mandatory minimums is also taking place in Australia.