Ending the Addiction to Incarceration

Today the New York Times has the story of Stephanie George, who is serving a life sentence without parole after an ex-boyfriend hid cocaine in her attic. At 23, George had been charged with making sales of crack totaling $40 and $120. She served time in a prison work-release program and resolved to stop selling drugs. She promised her young children she would never leave them again. A few years later, the police showed up at her house with a warrant and confiscated a locked box hidden in her attic. Her ex-boyfriend gave them a key to open it, and told them he had paid George to hide the drugs for him. She was convicted as part of a conspiracy to distribute cocaine. 

George's fellow defendants testified against her, thus avoiding mandatory sentences themselves. But there was no way around the harshest penalty for George. The judge in the case told her, “your role has basically been as a girlfriend and bag holder and money holder but not actively involved in the drug dealing, so certainly in my judgment it does not warrant a life sentence.” Yet because of mandatory minimum laws, the judge had no discretion in handing down an appropriate punishment. He had no choice but to sentence her to life without parole.

Today, George is one of the 1.3 million Americans in jail or prison for nonviolent offenses, many serving unjustifiably long sentences. Spurred on by the tough-on-crime mentality of the last few decades, long sentences for first-time offenses coupled with rigid laws mandating increased penalties for repeat offenders mean the average length of prison sentences in the U.S. has increased by 36 percent since 1990. Our prisons are more crowded than ever, with people serving too-long sentences at too great a price - both human and fiscal. Families are being torn apart and state spending on incarceration has more than tripled in the past three decades, yet drugs are just as easy to come by.