NY Times editorial against mandatories

This morning’s New York Times has this strong editorial, entitled “An Idea Whose Time Should Be Past,” which calls for the elimination of all mandatory sentencing statutes.  Here are excerpts:

The mandatory sentencing craze that began in the 1970s was a public-policy disaster. It drove up inmate populations and corrections costs and forced the states to choose between building prisons and building schools or funding medical care for the indigent.  It filled the prisons to bursting with nonviolent drug offenders who would have been more cheaply and more appropriately dealt with through treatment. It tied the hands of judges and ruined countless young lives by mandating lengthy prison terms in cases where leniency was warranted. It undermined confidence in the fairness of the justice system by singling out poor and minority offenders while largely exempting the white and wealthy….

Nowhere is repeal of mandatory-sentencing policies more urgently needed than in New York, which sparked an unfortunate national trend when it passed its draconian Rockefeller drug laws in the 1970s. Local prosecutors tend to love this law because it allows them to bypass judges and decide unilaterally who goes to jail and for how long.

But the general public is increasingly skeptical of a system that railroads young, first-time offenders straight to prison with no hope of treatment or reprieve.  In an often-cited 2002 poll by The New York Times, for example, 79 percent of respondents favored changing the law to give judges control over sentencing. And 83 percent said that judges should be allowed to send low-level drug offenders to treatment instead of prison.

As I have suggested before, repealing and even resisting mandatory minimum sentences requires politicians to show courage and leadership to help the public understand the complicated but compelling reasons why crude mandatory sentencing provisions often do more harm than good in a criminal justice system.  I am hoping that, in the wake of the Supreme Court and the US Sentencing Commmission showing courage and leadership last week, some elected official will step up to the plate.