Mandatory Sentencing

Mandatory minimum sentencing has been a part of the American judicial system since the early days of the nation; however, its modern application began in the 1980s. Mandatory minimum sentencing is defined by the U.S. Sentencing Commission as “statutory provisions requiring the imposition of at least a specified minimum sentence when criteria specified in the relevant statute have been met.” Simply stated, it is an elimination of judicial discretion, specifically enumerated in any number of federal criminal statutes, with regard to the sentencing of individuals found guilty in a federal court. In order to attain a broad understanding of this concept, it is first necessary to review its history and to recognize the contextual issues that fostered its large-scale implementation.

[Page 483]As noted above, mandatory minimum sentencing has been a part of the American judicial system since the late 1700s. These inclusions of sentencing requirements, however, were few in number. They were, for the most part, focused on crimes that inflicted death, also known as capital crimes. In 1956 the U.S. Congress experimented with the extension of mandatory minimum clauses with the passage of the Narcotic Control Act. The goal of this criminal legislation was to stem the growing narcotics problem in the United States by placing stiff mandatory minimum sentences on individuals convicted of either importing or distributing illegal drugs. This particular application of mandatory sentencing for narcotics violations was short lived. In 1970 the U.S. Congress passed the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act. In the passage of this legislation, Congress cited their understanding that the implementation of mandatory sentencing requirements had not been an effective tool in slowing the growth of the drug problem. This congressional action, however, was not the end of mandatory minimum sentencing requirements in the United States.

While the repeal of the Narcotic Control Act by Congress reflected their disappointment in the lack of success mandatory minimum sentencing had shown, the progress toward a new understanding of the role played by criminal punishment was rapidly moving in a new direction. In the decades before the 1980s, prison was viewed primarily as a tool of rehabilitation. The judicial system in the time of indeterminate sentencing believed that, while criminals deserved to be punished for their actions, that punishment was in fact a chance to change individuals and prepare them to be productive members of society. This system of rehabilitation provided few requirements with regard to sentencing, but rather allowed federal judges to exercise their individual discretion on a case-by-case basis. In the 1980s, the use of indeterminate sentencing in certain cases fell to the criticisms that rehabilitation was difficult to define and achieve, and that its subjectivity created significant disparities, which were potentially ineffective at deterring future crime. Indeterminate sentencing was replaced in 1984 with determinant sentencing with the passage of a number of federal criminal statutes focusing primarily on violent or narcotics-related crimes. The new role of punishment at the conclusion of this shift was to provide unified sentencing that would be harsh enough to deter criminal acts. While mandatory minimum sentencing requirements can be used in an indeterminate system, it is associated more with the deterrence goal of the determinant approach.

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