SENTENCING PRACTICES & ISSUES

Mandatory sentencing laws were first enacted in the 1980s. These minimum mandatory sentencing laws deprived judges of the discretion to tailor sentences based on the gravity of the crime and capability of the defendant (Henderson 289). In result, the effect of current sentencing policies has been dramatic. Since 1972, the population of federal and state prisons has increased 500 percent to nearly two million [including jail populations]. An increasingly large percentage of these imprisonments are related to drug crimes. Currently, nearly half a million inmates in federal and state prisons are serving time or awaiting trial for drug offenses. These statistics help describe the national strategy to address a public health problem in drug abuse and its relation to mass incarceration.
There is a misconception that racial disparity is simply the result of minorities using drugs at a higher rate than whites, however, that is not the case. According to the federal health statistics, drug use rates per capita among minority and whites are relatively similar (Henderson 289). Even though African Americans constitute only about 12 percent of the population, they make up approximately 38 percent of those arrested for drugs, 59 percent of those convicted for drug offenses, and 74 percent of those who are sentenced to prison for drug offenses. This discrepancy can be traced back to the practice of racial profiling. Due to the assumptions that minorities use drugs at a higher rate prompts the arrest of a higher number of minorities. Police enforcement tactics don’t focus on non-person of colors: easy to accomplish drug arrests are often times made in inner-city neighborhoods than in white or middle-class neighborhoods.
Since these mandatory sentencing laws were adopted by Congress quickly during the national panic about drugs, crack offenses were punished more harshly than powder cocaine crimes, where commonly the user was white (Maur 2016). Prisons began to be filled with African Americans serving five to 10 years or longer terms for these offenses after these laws were enacted at the federal level.
Mandatory sentencing drug laws are engines of racial injustice. They have filled America’s to the rafters with thousands of non-violent minority offenders. Repeal of these laws would be a significant step towards mentoring racial fairness in the criminal justice system.