Summarize the five main empirical findings on the effectiveness of mandatory minimum sentences

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The U.S. Sentencing Commission has evaluated the effectiveness of mandatory minimum sentences. Commission studies provide little empirical support for the success of mandatory sentencing laws. Instead, the Commission's findings demonstrate five major conclusions.

(1) Only a few of the mandatory minimum sentencing provisions are ever used, and nearly all of those are related to drug or weapon offenses.

(2) Less than half of defendants whose characteristics and behaviors qualify them for mandatory minimum sentences actually receive them.

(3) Mandatory minimum sentences actually introduce disparities in sentences.

(4) Other disparities in sentences result from reductions for providing "substantial assistance to prosecutors.". This tends to favor the very people the law was meant to reach; that is, those higher up in the chain of drug dealing and other crimes.

(5) Mandatory minimum sentences don't eliminate discretion, they just shift it from judges to prosecutors. Prosecutors end up using the discretion in a number of ways, including manipulating the "substantial assistance exception" and in deciding whether to charge defendants with the crimes carrying minimum mandatory sentences to begin with.