Bob's Links and Rants

Welcome to my rants page! You can contact me by e-mail: bob@goodsells.net. Blog roll. Site feed.

Friday, April 11, 2003

Two million people in prison in this country is just unacceptable


Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy spoke out in Congress today about the evil of mandatory sentences. Good for him! Read the book The Perpetual Prisoner Machine: How America Profits from Crime for much more on this issue. Here's some of what Kennedy said, from CNN:

"When the guilt determination phase and the sentencing is over," Kennedy said, "the legal system loses all interest in the prisoner. And this must change. Winston Churchill said a society is measured by how it treats the least deserving of its people. And two million people in prison in this country is just unacceptable."

Kennedy went on to explain the downside of mandatory minimum sentences in some circumstances, telling lawmakers, "You'll have a young man, and he shouldn't be doing this, but he's raising marijuana in the woods. That makes him a distributor. And he's got his dad's hunting rifle in the car, he forgot about it and he wants to do target practice, that makes him armed. He's looking at 15 years.

"An 18-year-old doesn't know how long 15 years is. And it's not so much the sentencing guidelines, it's the mandatory minimums. That's the problem," Kennedy said.

Kennedy said it is up to Congress and the judiciary to address the problem. Asked outside the hearing room whether he really believed Congress would re-examine mandatory minimums, Kennedy acknowledged the political difficulty for some congressmen in doing so, telling CNN, "It's the soft-on-crime issue."