By Pat Nolan, President of Chuck Colson’s Prison Fellowship Ministries, Justice Fellowship, Justice eReport Vol. 5, No. 2, February 1, 2006.

Dear friends,

Weldon Angelos, a 28 year old music executive and father of two young children was convicted of selling small amounts of marijuana three times for a few hundred dollars each time. He was sentenced to 55 years in prison.

Angelos will serve what is essentially a life sentence for selling a small amount of pot.

This sentence is far longer than if he had been convicted of second degree murder, hijacking, kidnapping, rape or aggravated assault.

In the same courtroom on the same day, another defendant was convicted of bludgeoning an elderly woman to death with a log. He was sentenced to 25 years.

How did a relatively minor crime merit a sentence more than twice that of a vicious crime? Federal mandatory minimum sentences impose long prison terms for a small number of crimes, mostly drug offenses. The killing of the elderly woman was not covered by a mandatory sentence.

The pot seller had a gun in his possession at time of the sales (the gun was not used or displayed). Because he was prosecuted in federal court, this triggered the mandatory minimum of 55 years for crimes that would have received a sentence of about 7 years if he had been convicted in Utah state court.

When judges mete out sentences for certain crimes, mandatory minimum laws prohibit them from weighing the relative harm caused by the crime or the relative culpability of the defendant. Mandatory minimum sentences are “one size fits all”. These laws offend the very notion of justice, which requires that the severity of the punishment match the harm done by an individual criminal. In Exodus 21:24, we are told that our judgments should exact an “eye for eye, tooth for tooth.” This verse limits punishment by requiring that offenders pay back “value for value.” The Bible calls for proportionality in punishment, and stresses that penalties should match the injury.

I must point out that discrepancies in sentences can cut both ways. Unreasonably lenient sentences violate biblical principles of justice in the same way unfairly severe ones do. However, the trend in recent years has been toward harsher, not more lenient sentences.

Mandatory minimum sentences are having a profound impact on our prisons. In federal facilities, the proportion of drug offenders has more than doubled, from under 28% in 1984 to over 61% in 1995. These long sentences have filled our prisons with people we’re mad at, rather than people we’re afraid of.

Mandatory minimum sentences produce another type of inequity. These laws were intended to encourage lower level criminals to “rat” up the chain, to get the crime bosses. However, they have had the opposite effect, with sophisticated criminals turning in smaller fish in return for shorter sentences. As Chuck Colson has pointed out, “Big-time criminals are able to finger others and negotiate a lesser sentence. The hardest hit are low-level offenders who have nothing to bargain with.”

This has resulted in “the girlfriend effect”, in which boyfriends caught selling drugs offer testimony against their girlfriends in return for a “get-out-of-jail-free” card. As a result, women (many of them with small children) are the fastest growing segment of our prison population.

Fortunately, there is growing resistance to expanding mandatory minimum sentences. For years many liberals have opposed these excessive sentences. Now, a growing chorus of conservatives is joining them. Ed Meese, President Reagan’s Attorney General, heads a group called the Sentencing Initiative that has established a set of principles to guide legislation on sentencing. Congressman Bob Inglis (R-SC) has announced that he will oppose all bills that contain mandatory sentences.

Mark Earley, President of Prison Fellowship, says, “Christians should give their representatives the permission they need to resist political posturing and undo past mistakes. Then, perhaps the fairness and wisdom of our system will also be beyond any reasonable doubt.”

Congress is considering a host of bills with mandatory minimum sentences tucked into many sections of the criminal code. Most legislators feel pressure to vote for these, even if the sentences result in absurdly long sentences such as the 55 years that Weldon Angelos in serving. It is important that your legislators know that the public wants sentences that match the harm done to society, not arbitrarily long sentences.

In His service,
Pat Nolan
President, Justice Fellowship