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The Problem is Also the Maximums

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Andrea Jones has an excellent piece on The War On (Some People Who Use Some) Drugs and mass incarceration. I do have one quibble: the framing suggesting defining the problem with draconian drug laws as “mandatory minimums.” Now, to be clear, the mandatory minimums for drug offenses should be reduced, and as the Supreme Court observed in the context of the death penalty they don’t even really reduce arbitrariness so much as transfer it from judges to the less accountable prosecutor’s office. Nevertheless, reducing mandatory minimums is far from sufficient. Maintaining the judicial discretion to impose lengthy maximum sentences for drug possession will lie around like a loaded weapon, leaving far too many people in prison. The problem with mandatory minimums isn’t the restriction on judicial discretion per se; it’s that people end up in prison who shouldn’t be there. This problem needs to be attacked from both ends.

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