Bills
| 3.23.22

Should Federal Mandatory Minimums Be Reduced for Non-Violent Drug Offenders? (H.R. 920)

Do you support or oppose this bill?

What is H.R. 920?

(Updated January 14, 2021)

 

This bill would reduce mandatory minimums in federal drug sentencing, giving federal judges more discretion when sentencing people convicted of non-violent drug offenses.

The mandatory minimum set forth in the Controlled Substances Act for a conviction related to the manufacture, distribution, or possession with intent to distribute certain drugs in specified amounts would be lowered from 10 years to five years. If death or serious bodily harm occurs from the drug’s use, the mandatory minimum would be lowered from 20 years to 10 years.

For first convictions, the mandatory minimum would be lowered from five years to two years, and dropped from 20 years to 10 years for a second conviction. If a person had two or more felony drug convictions before their next conviction, the mandatory minimum would be dropped from life imprisonment to 25 years.

Mandatory minimums under the Controlled Substances Import and Export Act would be lowered for drug couriers from 10 years to five for a first conviction, and from 20 years to 10 for a second conviction. For convictions involving couriers of smaller amounts of illegal drugs, the mandatory minimum would be lowered from five years to two for a first offense, and from 10 years to five for a second offense.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission would be directed to review and change its sentencing guidelines to:

  • Ensure that prison populations don’t exceed capacity;

  • Consider the fiscal and public safety implications of these changes;

  • Reduce racial disparities in Federal sentencing.

Argument in favor

It doesn’t make sense to imprison low-level, non-violent drug offenders for years, or even decades considering how overcrowded the prison system already is. The U.S. corrections system should be focusing its resources on violent threats to the public.

Argument opposed

Drugs ruin people’s lives, and those who make and distribute drugs need to be incarcerated as they pose a clear threat to public safety. Lowering mandatory minimums sends the wrong message and undermines the war on drugs.

Impact

People convicted of low-level, non-violent drug offenses, their families and communities, federal judges, the DOJ, the Attorney General.

Cost of H.R. 920

A current CBO cost estimate is unavailable. In January 2014, the CBO estimated this bill’s predecessor (in the 113th Congress), finding that it would reduce DOJ spending by $4 billion over the 2015-2024 period. However, because eligible prisoners would be released sooner and be able to receive federal benefits, there would be an increase in spending of about $1 billion over that same period — leading to a net savings of about $3 billion.

Additional Info

In-Depth: The lead sponsor of this legislation — Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID) — praised the increased flexibility his bill would provide: 

“We must be strict, but also smart, when it comes to federal criminal sentencing. The ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach Congress put on the books has tied the hands of judges without improving public safety. Nearly half of the inmates filling our federal prisons are incarcerated for drug offenses. Many of them do not need overly harsh penalties. And yet judges are forced to impose these penalties, even if they don’t want to.”

At the moment, this bill has 52 cosponsors, including 38 Democrats and 14 Republicans, while the Senate version of this legislation has seven Democratic and five Republican cosponsors. It has been endorsed by a variety of groups from across the ideological spectrum, including Heritage Action; American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU); American Bar Association; Constitution Project; and the NAACP — among others.


Of Note: According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) there were 95,474 inmates in federal custody who were convicted of drug offenses as of March 2015  making up 48.7 percent of all federal inmates. The population of federal prisons has grown by nearly 800 percent in the past 30 years, and the Director of the BOP told a House Appropriations subcommittee in 2013 that the federal prison system was overcrowded by 40 percent.

Of all the prisoners in BOP custody in 2010, 39.4 percent were subject to a mandatory minimum sentence. Mandatory minimum sentences applied to about 60 percent of all federal drug offenders in 2012, and of those federal drug offenders — only 15 percent had a weapon involved in their arrest.


Media:

Summary by Eric Revell
(Photo Credit: Flickr user Office of Public Affairs)