Swift and Tank are two young men who received harsh prison sentences for their crimes. Their crimes did not involve weapons or violence and these young men had no previous felony convictions. These men were first-time non-violent drug offenders who received cruel and unusual prison sentences under the mandatory minimum drug sentencing laws. Swift was sentenced to prison for seven years for possession of one ounce (28 grams) of crack cocaine. Tank received an eighteen year prison sentence for possession and intent to distribute nine ounce (252 grams) of crack cocaine. Although all of these were released from prison before 2010, they would have received a shorter prison sentence under current federal drug sentencing policy, the Fait Sentencing…show more content… From 1980 to 1997 the number of people behind bars for nonviolent drug law offenses increased from 50,000 to over 400,000. CNN (Branson, 2012) and FOX News (Associated Press, 2010) report that the War on Drugs cost tax payers $1 trillion since its inception. A huge part of this cost has been the cost of incarceration due to the mandatory minimum drug sentencing guidelines. It cost $40,000 a year to incarcerate one inmate for one year. Together, Tank and Swift spent a total of 25 years in prison costing tax payers about $10…show more content… History of Drug Sentencing Policy in the United States
Recreational drug use was very common in the U.S. in the late 1960s. To combat the illegal drug use, Congress passed the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act in 1970. The drug laws prior to this Act failed to address the illegal use of legally manufactured drugs. During the 1970’s concern about illegal drugs started to gain more attention when President Nixon coined the phrase “war on drugs”. The War on Drugs consisted of increasing the size of drug control agencies and creating harsher penalties for certain types of illegal drugs through mandatory sentencing laws.
In 1972 the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) was created with the purpose of being the sole federal agency to enforce the federal drug laws through an executive order signed by President Nixon. This was the first of many changes that swept across our nation as the War on Drugs began and the prison population in America began to skyrocket. Legislative concern about illegal drug use built throughout the 1970s and 1980s, largely due to media portrayals of people addicted to the smokeable form of cocaine known as
