http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1623747
January 29, 2004
Georgia's Supreme Court reviews the sentence of Marcus Dixon. The 18-year-old African American was convicted of aggravated child molestation for having sex with a 15-year-old girl, a crime that carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison. The case is fueling a debate on the fairness of mandatory sentences. Hear NPR's Ari Shapiro.
Honestly, I can see both sides of the argument for this. On one hand, mandatory sentences can often send people who have committed relatively minor infractions in prison for long periods of time by over-zealous prosecutors. To explain further, criminal laws are often written quite broadly and leave a lot of gray area for interpretation. This gray area can potentially allow these over-zealous prosecutors to charge criminals with certain crimes that hold longer sentences because they somewhat fall under certain criterion.On the other hand, laws that do not carry mandatory sentencing can lead to unequal sentencing between offenders.
Frankly, I'm torn between the two sides. There have been many times where I have heard about cases where a small child is sexually abused and all the offender received was a slap on the wrist and probation. It is cases like these that make my stomach curl because, as a parent of two small children,I feel that there should be a mandatory prison sentence for these types of offenses.
However, on the other side of the argument, I feel as though mandatory sentences on some crimes can inadvertently cause more problems than good. A good example would be the Three Strikes Law in California. While I do not condone criminal activity and feel as though the basic principals behind the Three Strikes Law are appealing, the law in fact has become very problematic and has cause major crowding in California's prison system. In my Corrections class at Hawkeye, we discussed an incident where a Californian man who had two prior non-violent felonies stole a carton of cigarettes from a gas station. Because the mere price of the cigarettes placed the theft in the felony bracket, the man was thus convicted of a third felony and sentenced to life in prison under the Three Strikes Law.
Now some of you may understand the conundrum I am in when asked to render a decision on the matter of mandatory sentencing. While I don't want to see offenders who commit extremely heinous crimes walk a way with nothing more than a slap on a wrist, I don't want to see a person guilty of a non-violent minor crime sentenced to an excruciating long prison sentence either.
Although I couldn't find a link for the California case I mentioned above, I did find a link (posted below) of more cases where the Three Strikes Law didn't work they way it was intended to.
http://www.facts1.com/general/news.htm#homeless