How the Criminal Justice System Hurts Young Americans | Commentary - Beltway Insiders

See - How the Criminal Justice System Hurts Young Americans | Commentary - Beltway Insiders


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To get a sense of why we need legislation to fix this, consider the estimated 4,500 federal crimes and over 300,000 associated regulations on the books. This is only a best guess — even the Congressional Research Service was unable to produce a complete list. As John S. Baker, a visiting professor at Georgetown Law School, put it, “[t]here is no one in the United States over the age of 18 who cannot be indicted for some federal crime.”

Thanks to an excess of laws and harsh mandatory minimum penalties, the U.S. imprisons young Americans at an astonishing rate. Of the nearly 2.3 million people in prison overall, millennials make up approximately 38 percent of federal prison inmates, and more than half of all inmates in state prisons.
Our far-too-numerous laws and their excessive punishments combine to impede young Americans from becoming productive members of society. Mandatory minimum sentences of five, 10, 20 years or more for nonviolent crimes deprive young people of their prime resume-building and career-launching years. Crime deserves punishment, but we’re not taking an eye for an eye — too often, it’s more like a life for an eye.

Take the case of Weldon Angelos, who sold small amounts of marijuana while in possession of a gun. No one was hurt or threatened, but mandatory minimum sentencing laws required a 55-year prison term for the 25 year-old Utahan. While his actions were indeed illegal, incarcerating a 25-year-old until he’s an octogenarian for a non-violent offense defies any sense of fairness or reason.

Weldon’s is but one of thousands of lives that have been ruined due to the injustices in our criminal justice system. For the last 30 years, Congress has passed too many laws carrying penalties that are too harsh, and too many people have been sent to prison when lesser punishments are available. As a result, we have the world’s largest prison population. A quarter of our federal crime fighting budget is spent on prisons — but half of all federal prison beds are filled with drug offenders such as Weldon.

It doesn’t take much time in prison to make the journey back into society a serious challenge for a young lawbreaker. Once a young person has a criminal record, a target is painted on their resume. Almost 90 percent of employers conduct criminal background checks on their applicants, and two-thirds of colleges ask about criminal history. Understandably, these challenges often lead to a “revolving door” phenomenon, where many young people turn back to crime soon after serving their original sentence.

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