"If this were happening in any other country, Americans would be aghast. A sentence of life in prison, without the possibility of parole, for trying to sell $10 of marijuana to an undercover officer? For sharing LSD at a Grateful Dead concert? For siphoning gas from a truck? The punishment is so extreme, so irrational, so wildly disproportionate to the crime that it defies explanation.
And yet this is happening every day in federal and state courts across the United States. Judges, bound by mandatory sentencing laws that they openly denounce, are sending people away for the rest of their lives for committing nonviolent drug and property crimes. In nearly 20 percent of cases, it was the person’s first offense."...
Jury nullification?
Police choosing to let someone off with a warning?
So this is the public's fault because they vote for politicians who are tough on crime?
Or the public and private prison systems who like extra inmates?
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
