By Sen. Paul Rand, Special to the Washington Times
I, like anyone else, whether a member of Congress or a parent, am
concerned with the well-being of our children. We all want to keep our
families and our communities safe. We want to see violent predators and
criminals put behind bars and punished for the harm they do to others
and to society.
Judges will tell you that current
federal sentencing
laws - known as mandatory minimums - don't actually do anything to keep
us safer. In fact, judges will tell you that mandatory minimums do much
harm to taxpayers and to individuals, who may have their lives ruined
for a simple mistake or minor lapse of judgment.
Mandatory
minimums reflect two of the biggest problems in Washington: The first
problem is the idea that there should be a Washington-knows-best,
one-size-fits-all approach to all problems, be they social, educational
or criminal. This approach leads to our second problem: Washington's
habit of undermining the system our Founding Fathers created. Their
system left as much power as possible in the hands of local and state
officials, and sought to treat people as individuals, not as groups or
classes of people.
Last year in my community, a family lost one of
their sons to an overdose. They almost lost their other son to a
mandatory minimum
sentencing.
Federal
law requires a mandatory 20-year sentence if a death occurs, even an
accidental one. If prosecutors had charged the surviving brother in
federal court, he would have received a mandatory 20-year sentence.
When
a crime is committed, it should fall to the local prosecutor, judge and
jury to determine the guilt or innocence, as well as determine the just
punishment for the crime. In the current system of
federal mandatory-minimum
sentencing,
the authority is taken away from the jury and judge, and given by the
legislature to the executive. Prosecutors already have tremendous power
because they collect the evidence and choose which crimes to charge. If a
mandatory penalty is attached to that crime, the prosecutor then exerts
much influence over the entire procedure, including the sentence.
Our
Founding Fathers went to great lengths to prevent the executive and
prosecutors from obtaining too much power. The Fourth Amendment was
written to stop overzealous searches, and the Fifth and Sixth Amendments
were written to establish full due process as an inalienable right.
Ignoring these rights comes with several tangible costs. In the last 30 years, the number of
federal inmates has increased from 25,000 to nearly 219,000. That is nearly a 10-fold increase in
federal prisoners, each of whom cost the taxpayers $29,027 a year to incarcerate. The
federal prison budget has doubled in 10 years to more than $6 billion.
Half of the people sentenced to
federal
prison are drug offenders. Some are simply drug addicts, who would be
better served in a treatment facility. Most are nonviolent and should be
punished in ways that do not require spending decades in a
federal prison, with meals and health care provided by the taxpayers.
For
these reasons and others, last week I joined my colleague Sen. Patrick
Leahy, Vermont Democrat, in introducing a bill that would authorize
judges to disregard
federal mandatory-minimum
sentencing on a case-by-case basis.
Some
might think it is unusual for a conservative Republican to join a
liberal Democrat on such a bill, but contrary to popular belief, the
protection of civil liberties and adherence to the Constitution should
be a bipartisan effort.
Mandatory minimums have also had a
disproportionate effect on the African-American community, and this
community and its representatives in Congress have been the most vocal
in support of reforms. These reforms are not "soft on crime," and call
for nothing more than safe streets, schools and neighborhoods. Like me,
these reformers oppose mandatory-minimum sentences that send their
fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters to prison for nonviolent crimes.
Oftentimes when this happens, families lose sources of income and
support, communities are torn apart, and less money is available for
community police and other effective crime-fighting tools.
I will
speak more about this in a speech I am giving at Howard University on
April 10. I hope to engage conservatives and liberals in a discussion of
how the
federal government should handle
mandatory minimums and the reforms needed to secure our Fourth, Fifth
and Sixth Amendment rights. How much of our liberty are we willing to
yield to the government in the name of a false sense security? This is a
debate that crosses many issues, and deserves full and fair
exploration.
Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican, is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations and Homeland Security committees.
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