MY OPINION: On Mandatory Minimum Sentences

By Coach Furlow

I don't think they are effective, nor are they fair, especially for the nonviolent crimes. They sometimes send people to jail on non-violent crimes for longer than the violent crimes. I don't think that a person that is set up in a drug sting should have the same sentence as a rapist or someone who has robbed a person or business. The person set up could have been at home minding his own business and just because he knows someone who has drugs does not mean he deals drugs. The confidential informant tells all kinds of lies to get himself out of trouble, even down to a life or death lie. Then the person who is being set up makes a call to help out a so-called friend. Now he's in trouble, when he's been a law abiding person all along. A person who rapes, robs, or kills knows what they are doing and they have done crimes to a person. The guy who was set-up has done nothing to no one. Then they get the same amount of time. It really turns a basically law abiding person into a real criminal. He goes and does all this time and when he gets out no one will hire him. Before he was employed and doing just fine. It leaves his kids and wife to try to pick-up where they were. Now he has no other way to survive other than a life of crime. A lot of non-violent criminals turn into violent ones because of the sentence that was given, all because it was mandatory. Give the judges the chance to base it on a case by case basis and to view it for the persons way of life and the circumstance that he was put in for the crime at hand. That is my opinion on the mandatory sentence subject.