Mandatory Minimum Sentencing
Our organization advocates for the protection of discretion in the adjudication process. Mandatory minimum prison sentencing is costly, ineffective, and inflexible - and therefore contrary to the goals of our justice system.
Our organization is strongly against the use of minimum prison term sentencing in Utah law and actively works to educate stakeholders on the false promises of mandatory minimums.
Here are some reasons why we believe mandatory prison sentences have no place in Utah law:
Mandatory minimum sentences guarantee that injustices will occur.
Even when lawmakers have the best of intentions, it is impossible to legislate in a way that accounts for every conceivable situation. Mandatory minimum sentences force judges to impose automatic punishments, overriding judicial discretion to consider the unique elements of each case. Though a proposed mandatory minimum sentence might be appropriate for most cases, there will always be outlier cases where it is contrary to justice.
Mandatory minimum sentences are contradictory to the principles of the justice system.
America’s government was designed to provide checks and balances which, in the criminal justice system, include providing for fair and just ways for disputes and competing ideas to be resolved. Mandatory minimum penalties put a huge amount of power in the hands of prosecutors while greatly reducing the checks that can be applied by the defense and the judges.
The current prison population is extremely costly to taxpayers and already threatens prison capacity.
Utah’s prisons are constantly at or near capacity. The Department of Corrections predicts that they will be at 100% capacity in a matter of months, which may happen sooner if penalties continue to increase.
The cost to house one inmate in a Utah prison is $114.81 a day, or $41,905.65 per year (Utah Department of Corrections, 2022). Each year, Utah’s prison population costs taxpayers approximately $250 million (Nolan Center for Justice).
Minimum mandatories delay the problem without addressing root causes of crime.
Mandatory minimum sentences do not reduce crime, and are more likely to increase recidivism than serve as a deterrent. While incarceration is perceived as severe to lawmakers, research shows that an offender’s perceived severity of incarceration decreases over time the more they are incarcerated, and an offender’s exposure to inmates with the same conviction increases their likelihood of reoffending (Petrich, et al., 2021).
Nationally, 95% percent of inmates are eventually released, which means that approximately 600,000 individuals leave prisons each year and another 10.7 million cycle through local jails (Petrich, et al., 2021). Utah prisons alone release over 4,100 people each year (Prison Policy Initiative). Knowing that offenders will be reentering society at some point, our aim should be to address the root causes of criminal behavior rather than continuing to fuel the criminogenic cycle with mandatory minimum prison sentences.
The majority of states are moving away from mandatory minimum sentences, with no negative effects on crime rates.
At least 29 states in the U.S. have instituted some form of mandatory minimum sentence reform since 2000 (Vera Institute). The First Step Act, a federal criminal justice reform bill passed in 2018, has accomplished its goal to reduce recidivism through strengthened judicial discretion and reduced mandatory minimum sentencing (Nellis & Komar, 2023). The U.S. Department of Justice reports a 12% recidivism rate from those benefiting from the First Step Act, versus the 45% recidivism rate of those not benefiting from the law (U.S. Department of Justice, 2023).