Should States Reform Mandatory Minimum Sentencing Laws?

Mandatory minimum sentencing laws exist on both the federal and state levels. These laws require prison or jail sentences for certain criminal offenses. For example, in Minnesota, offenders may face mandatory minimum sentences for multiple DWI convictions, sex offenses, gun and weapon charges, and for controlled substance charges. Mandatory minimums are notoriously associated with drug crimes, as many of these laws were enacted as part of the “War on Drugs” in the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. The purported reasoning behind these laws was the hope that they would reduce drug crime in the United States by taking offenders off the streets for extended periods of time and by deterring future crimes with the threat of long prison sentences. Additionally, lawmakers claimed these laws would serve to eliminate sentencing disparity in the criminal courts.

However, in recent years, the need to reform mandatory minimum sentencing laws in the U.S. has become a hot-button issue. Both liberals and conservatives have admitted that these one-size-fits-all sentencing policies have not achieved a reduction in crime–specifically with drug offenses. Instead, these laws have largely led to the overcrowding of prisons and the stretching of corrections budgets on both the federal and state levels. While many politicians push for reform, others remain in full support of harsh mandatory minimum sentences.

Sentencing disparity remains

Mandatory minimums were intended to eliminate unfair disparities in sentences issued at the sole discretion of criminal judges. By setting minimums, the laws effectively took a large amount of sentencing discretion away from judges, giving them limited power to depart from the sentencing guidelines. Yet taking this discretion away has, in in certain situations, resulted in overly harsh penalties.

Take, for example, Minnesota’s statute 609.11, which requires that anyone convicted of possession of controlled substance while also in the possession of a firearm serve a 36-month prison sentence. Under this statute, it need not be proven that the gun was used in the commission of a crime, but only that there was contemporaneous control or possession of a firearm and felony level drugs.

Mandatory minimum sentence laws tend to take power away from judges and place power in the hands of prosecutors. Prosecutors have the discretion whether or not to charge cases that include mandatory sentencing provisions. For example, it is the prosecutor’s decision whether or not to include the above-mentioned 609.11 provision when charging out controlled substance cases, or add those charges at a later date. This gives them a huge bargaining chip when negotiating settlement, because a defendant may reluctantly be induced to plead guilty to avoid amended charges that carry a substantially more severe mandatory minimum sentence.

It’s important to be aware that mandatory minimum sentences vary from drug to drug. For instance, mandatory minimums are higher for crack cocaine than for powder cocaine, which results in racial disparity because a much higher number of African-Americans are arrested for crack cocaine offenses while the majority of white individuals arrested for cocaine offenses are using it in the powder form.

Overall, the debate surrounding mandatory minimum sentencing reform continues both in Washington, D.C. and within the individual states. I have extensive experience handling Minnesota criminal cases that may involve a mandatory minimum. If you have been arrested, please call us today for assistance.