Reason: Jacob Sullum: 'What President Obama Can Do Right Now to End Outrageous Prison Sentences'

Source:Reason Magazine- a woman who was featured in Jacob Sullum's column.

"In a moving front-page story about sentencing reform, New York Times reporter John Tierney highlights the heartbreaking case of Stephanie George, a single mother of three who received a life sentence without parole in 1997 because her boyfriend stashed half a kilogram of cocaine in her Pensacola, Florida, home. That offense, together with earlier convictions for a couple of small-time crack sales, triggered a mandatory sentence that U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson, in a sadly familiar ritual, declared unjust as he was imposing it. "Even though you have been involved in drugs and drug dealing," Vinson told George, "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." Today Vinson tells Tierney:

She was not a major participant by any means, but the problem in these cases is that the people who can offer the most help to the government are the most culpable. So they get reduced sentences while the small fry, the little workers who don't have that information, get the mandatory sentences.

The punishment is supposed to fit the crime, but when a legislative body says this is going to be the sentence no matter what other factors there are, that's draconian in every sense of the word. Mandatory sentences breed injustice.

Families Against Mandatory Minimums, of course, has been making these arguments for more than two decades, but Tierney notes that they are finding an increasingly receptive audience among conservatives having second thoughts about the cost-effectiveness of mass incarceration and legislators facing tight budgets with less room for the wasteful spending reflected in numbers like these... 

From Reason Magazine