prisoners copulate or perish in us prison, page-2

This highlights the dangers of mandatory sentencing that our very own polllies are pushing as hard as they can go.

Since we have a judicial system, we need to trust our judges to make the correct decisions regarding sentencing. They are trained for the job. Mandatory sentencing can lead to ridiculous outcomes that are totally out of proprotion to the crime. The judicial sentencing system was developed so that sentences took into account a wide range of variables including circumstances, motivations, record etc.

No doubt some judges make decisions that many of us have trouble understanding but on the whole the system works far better than one introduced through political expediency particularly at election time when pollies make political capital usually at the expense of those who can least afford to fight back