Pubdate: Mon, 05 Aug 2002
Source: Denver Post (CO)
Copyright: 2002 The Denver Post Corp
Contact:  http://www.denverpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/122
Author: State Rep. Peter Groff
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?199 (Mandatory Minimum Sentencing)

EXAMINING MANDATORY MINIMUM SENTENCING

Re: "One-size-fits-all justice," July 21 Perspective stories.

Mandatory minimum sentencing laws take discretion away from judges and 
money away from the state.

These flawed statutes require judges to hand down sentences as if using a 
graph, plugging in the crime on one axis and matching it with a punishment 
on theother.

The legal process is the act of weighing and balancing circumstances, not 
of always abiding by a fixed standard. Judicial deliberation, not 
equations, should determine proper punishment. It's no accident that the 
symbol for justice is a scale.

Mandatory minimum sentencing statutes reduce the criminal-justice process 
to an equation.

But the real equation looks something like this: Mandatory minimums equal 
less judicial prudence, and more people in jail for more time; more 
prisoners equals more state money spent on prisons and less state money 
spent on education, transportation, health care and so on.

I am the co-chair of a legislative interim subcommittee that is examining 
mandatory minimum sentences and disparities in sentencing. We will meet 
several times between now and next January's regular legislative session.

Hopefully, our efforts will produce a method that gives judges more freedom 
to exercise measured, not mechanical, justice while costing the state less 
money.

State Rep. PETER GROFF Denver
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom