Laws, Policies, Court Cases The main reason of the use of mandatory minimums and a root problem of it is the legal actions of the War on Drugs proposed by Richard Nixon during the 1970s. This in turn led to a drastic increase in prison population and did little to help the people addicted to the drugs. Attempts to mitigate the strength of punishments being handed out such as the commission of decriminalizing marijuana bills of 1973 and 1977, as well as the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2015 have been turned down. A court case that involves challenging the mandatory minimums is the court case of Alleyne v. United States, where in a 5 to 4 decision the court decided that facts that trigger a mandatory minimum sentence must be included and proven to a jury by proof beyond a reasonable doubt. This goes against the Harris V. U.S This gives protection to the …show more content…
As well as that they remove the judge's’ ability to consider individual circumstances, indirectly create racial disparities, and goes against the constitutional rights of the prosecuted. The ACLU plans to abolish, and or reform because of the problems. Their strategy to change the problem is by passing acts such as the Fair Sentencing Act to reduce the racial difference within prison, and even out the sentence difference between forms of drugs.
Data Analysis
Upon analysis of the data I have come to the conclusion that even with an explanation of mandatory minimums the public seems not to understand the consequences of mandatory minimum. 50% stating they know little to nothing at all, as well as 45% stating it is an effective tool shows that very fact. With that in knowledge, the community supports conditional probation depending on crime with 50% .I personally support the complete removal of mandatory minimums, as it is clearly a failure in our legal justice