How mandatory minimums helped drive mass incarceration
Video Overview & Insights
Mandatory minimums were supposed to help crack down on drug crime in the 80s. But they've had huge unintended consequences.
I believe I have an idea that will put an end to mass incarceration: STOP COMMITTING CRIMES !!!
10 charts that show the racism of US criminal justice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InOsF5x1lZw
Senator Cory Booker on "caste system" criminal justice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQMZGkMPDFU
Yea there’s an issue here
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These statutes dictate specific prison terms for certain crimes deemed uniquely harmful to society. By design, they bar judges from using discretion during sentencing. Minimums have been around since America’s founding, but the most consequential ones were erected in the 1980s in response to the ravages of the inner-city drug trade. The idea was to establish uniformly stringent punishments to both deter drug offenses and lock away kingpins. And a central feature of this framework was the now infamous minimum sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine violations.
"They should be caged like wild animals because that's what they are"
"We are not going to be put back into slavery by our own people"
SEEMS LEGIT
The US government created a 100-to-1 minimum sentence disparity between crack and powder cocaine.
In the US, crack consumption is tied to income, and income is tied to race. So this arbitrary sentencing disparity has forced courts to punish black Americans much more harshly than white Americans for basically the exact same crime. As a result, tens of thousands of young men, most of whom are black, have been snatched up by law enforcement on low-level drug offenses and thrown into prison for mandatory terms that make a mockery of any sense of proportionately. This situation is so absurd that its sparked the formation of a reform coalition composed of the most unlikely of allies, including the Koch brothers, the NAACP, Newt Gingrich, the ACLU, Senator Rand Paul, and the Obama White House.
Mandatory minimums are racist
Fortunately, policymakers have started injecting some common sense into the minimums regime. A landmark 2005 Supreme Court decision afforded federal judges some leeway to stray from dictated terms. A major federal criminal justice package passed in 2010 eliminated minimums for simple crack possession and dramatically ratcheted back the crack-powder sentencing disparity from 100-to-1 to 18-to-1. And President Obama recently wielded the executive commutation power to pardon 46 people serving excessive mandatory terms for nonviolent drug offenses. But there's a still a long way for the US to go to make sentencing fair.
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2:22 - Please explain how a low level drug offence can be non-violent when the guy is arrested WITH A GUN.
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Thanks Joe Biden! That 1994 crime bill gave all your supporters felonies 😂
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Im using this for my debate paper
More User Perspectives
Abolish prisons and bring rehabilitation
@nuriyaashIt's not mandatory minimums thats fueling mass incarceration, it's prison labour.
@jupitired777Its ironic that Trump repealed the 1994 crime bill instead of Obama.
@carlosr6597Joe Arpaio needs to be head of DOJ to fix the system. Man had tent prisons and almost obliterated crime in Phoenix during his tenure.
@jackbowers7889How much did the corporation CEO who poisoned the waters in Flint get? Oh he's a free man, right.
@Lawrence2525Simply don’t do drugs
@koolkiz9699Thank god President Trump is reversing that
@brianmalone28For things like armed Robbery it should life for all involved. Even the getaway driver , even if no one was killed .
@kettlebellkyle311Tough on crime
aka, a politician or a district attorney up for election who knows putting on this image of being "touch on criminals" will appeal to voters, regardless of the fact it ironically traps more people in a cycle of crime and wastes untold taxpayer dollars
Gotta love Democrats— they care so much about blacks. And they throw their votes for them 95% of the time. How does that really work out?
@rabidfarmer9765Obama was a dirty, hateful, bigoted, and racist president.
@joeyd4364I agree with Vox!?
Of course they bring race into it later in the video.
That type of sentencing is cruel.
@mobalozibollimas1140Dear black people,
Please stop blaming others for your poor life choices and stop commiting crime in record numbers.
The End,
Logic and Reasoning
In tears..
@ms.rstake_1211I love Obama so much.
@ms.rstake_1211How dare you try to flip the blame on the Black leadership. Yes, there is a need for accountability on their part. BUT THE BLAME, THE GUILT AND RESPONSIBILITY is on those of the THE WHITE GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS! Let us not play dumb or stupid about "who" was responsible for locking up these Black and Brown bodies!
@paradoxesoffreedom6964these criminals are mostly from single mothers. Planned Parenthood has the right idea to kill them all in the womb.
@rabidfarmer9765"carrying a gun" during committing a crime is a "minor offense" according to these nut cases
@toneman335Obama and Hillary should be permanent residents of a prison.
@toneman335Um, no, it's the idiotic morons that immerse themselves in criminal activity that drive mass incarceration. Don't blame the minimums.
@ems3832Why don't these "mandatory minimums" apply to those corrupt criminals on Wall Street???
@undrtakr900The only reason I like mandatory minimums is it means that women get the same time as guys. When women gets a slap on the wrist for a crime, when a guy does the same crime he gets 4 years.
@PumpkinKingXXIIIa black guy visit a jail. whoopte doo
I'm black and I aprove this message
Be skeptical of the left-wing talking point that the prisons are overflowing with low-level drug offenders. Drug offenses make up only 16% of state prisoners. They make up 48% of federal prisoners, but this is only about 100,000 people, and these are drug traffickers, not low-level users. Release all drug offenders and America still has a huge prison population. According to a BJS study, crack cocaine offenders were most likely to have extensive criminal histories (40%), used a weapon (32%), and received longer prison terms. Regarding mandatory minimums in general, wasn't it at about the time they started passing these that violent crime in this country began a long steady decline?
@daleg.9673my boyfriend does not deserve to do a extreme sentence but he will be sentenced Thursday and I am so lost at how I am going to have to lose such long unnecessary time that we could be together. he knows he has made a bad mistake n yes punish but don't take his and my life away I'll do part of his sentence if he ever did anything like it again. I would sign my name with him n do the exact sentence in a prison if he does wrong again. I truly believe he would be fine on a probation and house arrest w only a real job being reason for going anywhere except home and to his po . n he is. a good man being wasted away if they destroy our lives w extreme time. I need him to help me live n I need my soulmate I pray some miracle happens that I will get to be with him . if he were a rapist or murderer then yes no chances on a house arrest program. but he is only done a lil dope . and he has been gone 7 months now I have to be able to love him. n he love me I don't think u should only b doomed to a prison on the first fed offence . now deliberately doing it after that yes I'd see prison but God I want him home we are so stressed n I wanted to b w my man
@lindsaylowe4728no jobs, no opportunities, no nothing in the ghettoData Show Racial Disparity in Crack Sentencing | US Newshttps://www.usnews.com/news/articles/.../data-show-racial-disparity-in-crack-sentencin...Cached
@leightonjulyeOh sure, let's give a guy 55 years for a non-violent crime. But rape?
Nah, 6 months is enough.
WTF
Vox, you need to learn what exponentially means.
@elamamkoulu3871Just don't do drugs. Simple as that.
@cegg2980goes to show you have no rights in this country... your life can be taken from you, you can be incarcerated whenever the government sees fit, and most of your constitutional rights have been reversed and nullified by other laws... we have no rights... only privileges
@khalede7530Adam ruins everything, anyone?
@radiantcat540estoy en una pricion Federal y no ayudan a las personas a rehabilitarse
@carmendejesus5351Gobierno no te ayuda en la prisión no hay rehabilitación
@carmendejesus5351❤️GARY JOHNSON❤️
@marcusfillard9578"Richard John Wershe Jr. is a political prisoner in America. The political component of his ordeal is local, it’s harsh and it’s vindictive.Wershe, who grew up in Detroit, was sentenced to life in prison without parole for a non-violent drug crime committed when he was 17. The law was eventually changed to allow parole but that hasn’t made a difference for Wershe. He is Michigan’s last remaining juvenile non-violent drug offender, still behind bars after 27 years. Wershe, who has been described by a prison official as a near-model prisoner, was never charged with any drug-related violence, he was never charged with ordering any drug violence, he never operated crack houses, he was never charged with conspiracy because he never had a gang, he was never named as an unindicted co-conspirator in any narcotics case and he was never called as a witness in any drug trials. Yet, he’s been labeled a drug lord and kingpin." - http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/11/29/is-cocaine-legend-white-boy-rick-serving-life-for-busting-crooked-cops.html
@davemajkowski6762Richard Wershe is 28 years into a life sentence for a non-violent drug offense which occurred when he was a minor (17 years old). Rick was arrested for doing what a drug task force had previously encouraged and paid him to do starting when he was just 14 years old. Why should Rick have to spend another day behind bars for the mistakes he made as a kid??"In May 1987, when he was 17, Wershe was charged with possession with intent to deliver eight kilos of cocaine, which police had found stashed near his house following a traffic stop. He had the misfortune of being convicted and sentenced under one of the harshest drug statutes ever conceived in the United States, Michigan’s so-called 650 Lifer law, a 1978 act that mandated an automatic prison term of life without parole for the possession of 650 grams or more of cocaine. (The average time served for murder in state prisons in the 1980s was less than 10 years.)Sentencing juvenile offenders to life without parole for non-homicide crimes was ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2010, by which point such sentences were already exceedingly rare; the court was able to locate only 129 inmates serving them nationwide. Michigan eventually acknowledged the failures of the 650 Lifer statute—the governor who signed it into law, William G. Milliken, has called it the greatest mistake of his career—and rolled it back in 1998. Those already serving time became parole eligible and began to be released. Wershe is the only person sentenced under the old law who is still in prison for a crime committed as a juvenile. Prominent and violent kingpins and enforcers from Wershe’s day in Detroit have long since been freed. And yet Wershe has remained incarcerated, for more than 27 years." - From 'The Trials of White Boy Rick' by Evan Hughes.
@davemajkowski6762the voice of this narrator is annoying
@tfgirardI really, really hate the narration in this video. Nasal guy shouting in a small room recorded on a phone... What the hell Vox? You're capable of decent production quality what is this.
@Visocacas55 years?? The U.S. life expectancy for males is around 70-80 years. That's more than HALF their entire life! Well shit.
@timothyclark5900People offer me coke often. I almost always turn it down. If someone offers me some crack(hasn't happened in over 15 years), I can't help myself. It is fantastic when used in moderation. If you can use it without becoming addicted it is truly magical.
@HarryBalzakMotherfucking American politics.
@m7mdawadh