Written Statement of Kevin Ring
President, Families Against Mandatory Minimums
Submitted to the Idaho House of Representatives
Committee on the Judiciary, Rules, and Administration at a hearing on
Controlled Substances and Mandatory Minimum Sentencing
March 15, 2016
I thank the Committee for its consideration of mandatory minimum sentencing reform and for
the opportunity to submit a written statement. We applaud Idaho for reconsidering its mandatory
minimum drug trafficking sentences and introducing legislation like H 179, which would repeal
these penalties.
Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit sentencing reform
advocacy group founded in Washington, DC, in 1991. FAMM’s mission is to ensure that
sentencing laws are fair and individualized, protect public safety, use taxpayer dollars wisely,
and preserve families and communities. We represent about 70,000 people nationwide, including
some who live here in Idaho. We are not against punishment or prisons. We simply believe that
sentences should fit the crime and the individual, and that judges, not lawmakers, are in the best
position to decide the proper punishment in each and every case.
FAMM supports the repeal of mandatory minimum sentences because every offender and every
case is unique. One-size-fits-all sentences do not permit courts to consider all of the relevant
facts and circumstances about the crime and its impact on the community, or the offender’s
criminal record, role, motive, profit, age, likelihood of rehabilitation, or need for mental health or
drug treatment, for example. The mandatory minimum sentence sometimes is the right
punishment in a particular case. But many other times, these penalties may be unjust, irrational,
or even counterproductive. Mandatory minimums force judges to send people who pose little
threat to public safety to prison for as long as people who are far more dangerous. Sentencing
addicts or street-corner drug sellers like they are drug kingpins is expensive, unfair, and
ineffective. The public is not safer when the right people do not go to prison long enough, but it
also is not safer when the wrong people go to prison for too long.
States across the country are rethinking their use of mandatory minimum sentences. Reform
efforts have gained bipartisan support for fiscal, social, and moral reasons. Prisons are expensive,
and states have limited resources. Money spent on unnecessary incarceration of a low-level
offender could be saved and better spent on strengthening local law enforcement and victim
services, closing cold cases, providing more drug treatment for addicted offenders, or improving
rehabilitation programs in prison. Mandatory minimum sentences also hurt families, the
economy, and the justice system. Mandatory sentences deprive spouses of breadwinners,
children of parents, and the economy of labor and tax revenue. Excessive sentences also diminish
respect for the justice system and law enforcement.
In the last 30 years, more than 30 states have reformed or repealed their mandatory minimum
sentences, reducing correction costs and prison populations and saving taxpayers money.1
1
Michigan, New York, Massachusetts, South Carolina, Oklahoma, and Maryland have repealed
all or some of their mandatory minimum drug sentences in recent years. Iowa cut the length of
most of its mandatory minimum drug sentences in half last year and is considering a partial
repeal this year. Other states like Virginia, Georgia, Minnesota, and Montana have created broad
“safety valve” exceptions to mandatory minimum sentences so that judges do not have to impose
them when doing so results in injustice or fails to make people safer.2
These reform stories have a happy ending. States that have passed reforms have seen crime drop
at the same time that they have reduced their prison populations and costs.3 The states’
experiences debunk the myth that mandatory minimum sentences are necessary to reduce crime.
Reforming mandatory minimum sentences actually makes communities safer, because it focuses
scarce resources properly, on the most dangerous offenders.
Mandatory minimum sentences were created in the midst of a fear of excessive drug abuse and
addiction. More than forty years later, mandatory minimum sentences have utterly failed to solve
this country’s drug problems. While drug trafficking is serious and harmful to communities, the
one-size-fits-all sentencing approach is not working. There is no evidence that mandatory
sentences deter crime.4 Street-level drug sellers are easily replaced employees in the drug trade,
for example, so mandatory minimums lock them up but cannot shut down a local drug market.
People often sell drugs to get money to feed their own addictions. For these offenders,
meaningful substance abuse treatment can hold them accountable and stop the cycle of drugfueled recidivism. Repealing mandatory minimum drug sentences gives judges flexibility and
more effective options for offenders like these.
We are confident Idaho’s judges are competent and committed to protecting public safety. We
are confident Idaho prosecutors will continue to advocate for lengthy punishments for the most
dangerous offenders – with or without mandatory sentences on the books. Repealing mandatory
minimum sentences does not mean no one goes to prison or serious offenders escape
punishment. Rather, it means expensive prison cells and long sentences are used wisely, not
indiscriminately. Everyone is safer when that wisdom prevails.
We urge the Idaho Legislature to repeal its mandatory minimum drug trafficking sentences as
soon as possible. Thank you for considering our views, and please contact us if we can be of
further assistance as you debate this important issue.
1
Families Against Mandatory Minimums, Recent State-Level Reforms to Mandatory Minimum Laws (June 1,
2016), http://famm.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Recent-State-Reforms-June-2016.pdf.
2
American Legislative Exchange Council & Families Against Mandatory Minimums, The State Factor: Mandatory
Minimum Sentencing Reform Saves States Money and Reduces Crime Rates (Mar. 2016), http://famm.org/wpcontent/uploads/2016/03/2016-March-ALEC-CJR-State-Factor-Mandatory-Minimum-Sentencing-Reform-SavesStates-Money-and-Reduces-Crime-Rates.pdf.
3
Pew Charitable Trusts, Most States Cut Imprisonment and Crime (Jan. 2015),
http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/assets/2015/01/pspp_imprisonment_crime.pdf?la=en.
4
Nat’l Academy of Sciences, The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and
Consequences, Chapter 5, at 140 (2014), https://www.nap.edu/catalog/18613/the-growth-of-incarceration-in-theunited-states-exploring-causes.
2