A group of senators has announced that it will be resubmitting the Smarter Sentencing Act, which would change the way mandatory minimum prison sentences are enforced. While the bill did not make it through the last session of Congress, Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) are leading a group of congressmen who are planning to have the proposal reexamined. This bill seems to be gaining support from both parties, especially because of the impact the war on drugs has had on both taxation and the number of people imprisoned in the United States.

This bill should become law because it would have the twofold effect of lowering taxpayer expenses going toward criminal incarceration and reducing the overcrowding issue in some prisons.

The purpose of the bill is to introduce “safety valves.” Safety valves, according to the Families Against Mandatory Minimums, “allow a judge to sentence a person below the mandatory minimum term if certain conditions are met.” This affects non-violent offenders, particularly criminals involved in drug related offenses by giving them an opportunity to have their cases looked over by a judge. This has the potential to dramatically reduce sentences if these reviews work in the favor of the offenders.

At first glance, some might be concerned about the fact that this bill could lead to the release of many currently incarcerated criminals. However, seriously violent offenders will not be affected by this plan.

The fact is that the United States currently has 2.2 million people incarcerated — a staggering increase of 500 percent over the last 30 years, according to statistics provided by The Sentencing Project.

Since the onset of the war on drugs, the number of people arrested and imprisoned for drug-related offenses has increased dramatically. While the crimes committed by these people do not deserve to go unpunished by any means, in most of these cases, it would be just as effective to have these convicts pay some other type of retribution for their crimes, which does not necessarily include being locked up.

John Horn, first assistant U.S. attorney in the Northern District of Georgia, explained in a March 13 Washington Post article that the current problem within our judicial system is a lack of designation for drug related crimes.

“Before the new policy, every defendant involved with over five kilos of coke would be subject to a minimum 10–20 years, whether he was a courier, someone in a stash house, a cell head or an organizational leader, and those distinctions can be important,” Horn said in the article.

The fact of the matter is that this legislation would allow courts to be fair in handing down sentences, and getting to the heart of drug organizations, rather than being preoccupied by minor players.

People should be in favor of this legislation because it means that taxes could be decreased. Taxpayers currently spend over $50 billion annually for state prisons, according to the National Association of State Budget Officers.

Molly Gill, the government affairs counsel at Families Against Mandatory Minimums, summed up the situation to BuzzFeed on Feb. 11, “It’s an un-missable opportunity to do something that would be good for Congress, for bipartisanship and for taxpayers, the Justice Department, families and communities,” Gill said.

Regardless of potential risks, the positives far outweigh the negatives, and for that reason this legislation should be passed.

Victoria Razzi is a freshman magazine journalism major. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at vcrazzi@syr.edu and followed on twitter at @vrazzi.

Published on February 16, 2015 at 12:39 am