Mandatory minimums, especially in the context of drug crimes or low-level infractions, should be understood as coercion, no different from threatening somebody with torture. By detaching the severity of the sentence from the severity of the crime, what the system is doing is threatening criminal defendants with pain. People are encouraged to plead guilty to crimes they didn’t commit to make that pain stop. It is not justice to send people away for fifteen years for low-level crimes, and it is not a deterrent. It does not keep us safe. It is just cruelty dreamed up by politicians who were
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