Mandatory Minimums

In 1986, sparked by the cocaine-overdose death of college basketball star Len Bias, Congress enacted a series of mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses. These laws — which often produce sentences of five years, ten years, or more — are based on the weight or amount of a drug possessed and whether the defendant was in the presence of a firearm. Under these mandatory minimum sentencing laws, federal judges are prevented from considering many factors that ordinarily would be likely to reduce a sentence.

These laws have resulted in sentences that are outrageously long — and many judges explicitly say they disagree with the sentences they are forced to impose. One recent example of the effect of mandatory minimum sentencing laws is a 25-year old Utah man who was sentenced to 55 years in prison for selling marijuana to undercover police on three occasions — because he happened to have a gun holstered on his ankle.

• Since mandatory minimum sentencing first began for drug offenders, the Federal Bureau of Prisons' budget has increased by more than 2,100%, from $220 million in 1986 to about $4.4 billion in 2004. Incarcerating a drug offender costs $22,000 annually. Because of mandatory minimum sentences, the number of drug offenders in federal prison grew from 25% of the total inmate population in 1981 to 60% in 2001.
• The United States currently incarcerates more than 2.2 million inmates, at a rate of every one in 143 people (contrasted with approximately one in 1000 in England, Italy, France, and Germany). Please see the links to the left for further information, or visit MandatoryMadness.org for a thorough overview of the issue.