Haitian immigrant Denese Calixte picked fruit in Georgia to support her seven children. After falling from a ladder, she was unable to work and proved susceptible to a drug dealer's offer of $200 a night to store a pill bottle of his crack cocaine. After being arrested and ultimately convicted of drug possession and distribution charges, she was sentenced to a mandatory minimum of 10 years and will be deported upon completion of her sentence.

As part of a project to question the wisdom of these sort of mandatory sentences, David Zlotnick, a professor at the Ralph R. Papitto School of Law at Roger Williams University in Bristol, will pair profiles of defendants like Calixte with those of the judges who reluctantly imposed their sentences. "The real issue is that we're inflicting unnecessary punishment on people who have committed non-violent offenses," says Zlotnick, who received a fellowship to study the issue from billionaire George Soros's Open Society Institute. He hopes his report, due to be completed in July 2003, will personalize the issue and illustrate "how disproportionate the sentences are."

As a federal prosecutor in Washington, DC, in the '80s, Zlotnick came to believe that the government's "priorities were out of whack." Because of mandatory minimums, convicts who had committed violent crimes were getting more lenient sentences than non-violent drug offenders. And although judges generally dislike mandatory sentencing, believing that it unfairly ties their hands, the practice steadily grew as part of a response to the government's ongoing war on drugs. More than sixty federal criminal provisions now contain mandatory minimum penalties.

Zlotnick says he defended a young Florida man, who was sentenced to 15 years for growing pot in his backyard, to atone for his work as a prosecutor. He also became involved with Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a national nonprofit established in 1991, challenging mandatory sentencing laws by starting new FAMM chapters, spearheading litigation projects, and testifying against the practice.

While politicians back mandatory sentencing because of a desire to appear tough on crime, studies have found that such sentences, besides being unduly harsh, disproportionately impact minorities. The Rand Corporation, hardly a liberal bastion, also indicated that mandatory minimums are not cost-effective and fail to reduce drug consumption or drug-related crime.

Congress has initiated some specific targeted reforms, such as minimizing the disparity between sentencing for possession of crack and powder cocaine. More progress has been made within state judicial systems, because states' smaller budgets are more sensitive to rising prison costs. Zlotnick suggests amending Rhode Island drug laws, which he believes are overly broad in defining drug possession as a felony. On a federal level, he favors restoring the sentencing guidelines from 1987 that were supplanted by mandatory minimums and returning more discretion to judges.

Issue Date: May 3 - 9, 2002