Eric Holder Is Sending Mandatory Minimums to Death Row

Eric Holder Is Sending Mandatory Minimums to Death Row

-Christopher Carroll

Mandatory minimums finally seem to be on death row. Let’s hope they don’t languish there like so many other Americans.

In a speech given for the American Bar Association in San Francisco on Monday, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that some non-violent drug offenders without affiliation with gangs and drug organizations, will not be subjected to the mandatory minimums that have characterized drug law enforcement since the mid-1980s.

Holder’s remarks were not ambiguous. After calling the criminal justice system “broken,” he explained that “with an outsized, unnecessarily large prison population, we need to ensure that incarceration is used to punish, to deter and to rehabilitate – not merely to warehouse and forget.”

“A vicious cycle of poverty, criminality and incarceration traps too many Americans and weakens too many communities,” continued Holder. “Many aspects of our criminal justice system actually exacerbate these problems rather than alleviate them,” he added.

Mandatory minimums were introduced to our judicial system in 1986 with the passage of the  Anti-Drug Abuse Act, a reaction to national outrage over widespread drug activity and violence in the country. Proponents of the law believe that harsh mandatory sentencing laws serve as a deterrent to breaking the law. Additionally, many believe that the “removal of a fact – the amount of drugs associated with a crime – that is so obviously relevant when considering blameworthiness and punishment,” runs contrary to standard disciplinary practices.

However, in a time marked by economic, racial and social inequality, Holder’s new stance is vital.

New policy will help reduce the length of prison sentences, which will have the effect of reducing the staggering rate and number of incarcerated people in the country. This will reduce costs, allowing vast sums of money to be diverted to other endeavors, whether they be education, healthcare, or tax breaks.

Additionally, by directing U.S attorneys across the country to develop “specific, locally tailored guidelines” for determining whether or not federal charges should be filed, Mr. Holder is encouraging local discretion in matters regarding the fate of members of communities. By returning sentencing to the discretion of judges and law enforcement officials, Holder is reserving jurisdiction, power and responsibility for those closest to disciplinary system. This reflects an extraordinarily fundamental American value, one where local officials, officers and policy-makers are more likely to know what is needed than are elected officials and experts in Washington D.C. We see the effectiveness of similar decision-making structures throughout history and the country: education policy is more effective when written by school boards, not Senators; emergency relief is faster when lead by local officials rather than monolithic organizations in D.C. By returning sentencing discretion to judges and allowing local district attorneys and law enforcement to set standards, Holder is leading the charge to reverse the public’s eroding sense of the moral credibility of their judicial system.

Lastly, and most importantly, mandatory minimum policy must be reformed because it unfairly treat minorities. In a paper submitted to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Families Against Mandatory Minimums writes that “research has shown that certain policies and procedures in the criminal and juvenile justice systems have a disparate impact on the African American and Latino communities in the United States. Mandatory minimums systematically and disproportionately affect minority groups in this country.”

This is unacceptable, made even more so by the fact that it is doubtful that mandatory minimums serve has a major criminal deterrent. It is far more likely that the inequality that pushes people toward criminal action outweighs sentencing deterrents. Social, economic, educational, environmental, sexual and developmental inequalities serve as the overwhelming reasons for criminal activity in our society. Policies that prove to strengthen those inequalities only make matters worse, causing people to resent and reject the judicial system that is meant to protect them. People who fear that reforming mandatory minimums weakens society and disciplinary systems do not realize that they actually do the opposite. By removing a source of unequal treatment, Eric Holder is leading the charge towards making our streets safer, our liberties stronger, and the fabric of our society more certain.