American Bar Association Calls for End to Mandatory Sentences

The American Bar Association’s Justice Kennedy Commission issued a report in June that found that many get-tough approaches to crime don’t work and some, such as mandatory minimum sentences for small-time drug offenders, are unfair and should be abolished. The American Bar Association’s Justice Kennedy Commission issued a report in June that found that many get-tough approaches to crime don’t work and some, such as mandatory minimum sentences for small-time drug offenders, are unfair and should be abolished.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said that society should re-examine how it spends money and makes choices about who goes to prison, how long they stay and what happens when they get out.

Laws requiring mandatory minimum prison terms leave little room to consider differences among crimes and criminals, the ABA commission found. “The costs of the American experiment in mass incarceration have been high,” the report said. It said states and the federal government spent $9 billion on jails and prisons in 1982, but that costs had soared to $49 billion in 1999.

The report, which took nearly a year, followed-up on criticism of the criminal justice system from Justice Kennedy, a moderate conservative appointed by President Ronald Reagan. Kennedy asked the ABA to look at what he called unfair and even immoral practices throughout the criminal justice system.

The ABA, the nation’s largest lawyers’ group with more than 400,000 members, will vote in August on whether to adopt the recommendations as official positions of the organization.

“For more than 20 years, we have gotten tougher on crime,” said ABA President Dennis Archer. “Now we need to get smarter.”

Source: Associated Press