Most would call Hamedah Hasan a survivor. At just twenty-one years old, she was able to get herself and her two daughters out of an abusive relationship. To many, she is the epitome of strength and perseverance. In the eyes of the US legal system, she is a convicted criminal serving a twenty-seven-year sentence.
According to sources, when Hamedah fled from her abusive relationship, she went to live with a cousin who was involved in dealing crack cocaine. Having never done cocaine herself, Hamedah felt indebted to her cousin and agreed to run errands and transfer money. Despite her previously clean record, she was ultimately charged with conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine and sentenced to twenty-seven years in prison.
Hamedah’s case is a part of a much larger issue. As a part of “The War on Drugs”, Ronald Reagan expanded his focus on criminal punishment and ending drug use in the United States. With this came the introduction of minimum mandatory sentences for drug-related crimes, among others.
Hamedah was a target of this crackdown due to the color of her skin and the community in which she lived.
Mandatory minimum sentences were implemented to deter already penalized and prospective offenders. The idea is that fewer criminal incidents will impact the general public if more offenders are imprisoned. Mandatory minimum sentences also convey that crime is being taken seriously by the government and within the legal system.
In reality, mandatory minimum sentences perpetuate the implicit biases that are already prevalent in the justice system. The War on Drugs and mandatory minimum sentences disproportionately target communities of color. Mandatory minimums have a large impact on mass incarceration, which also has disproportionate effects on minorities. According to the NAACP, “One out of every three Black boys today can expect to be sentenced to prison, compared to one out of six Latino boys, and one out of seventeen white boys.”.
Confirmation and implicit biases play a large role in these continual issues in our justice system. While mandatory minimums are intended to give a sense of uniformity to the justice system, psychological biases only further inequality. According to the Mandatory Minimum Report, “The disparate application of mandatory minimum sentences… appears to be related to the race of the defendant, whereas whites are more likely than non-whites to be sentenced below the applicable mandatory minimum.”
Police officers and actors in the legal system exhibit implicit bias in arrests and sentencing evaluations. Communities with large populations of people of color are policed at disproportionate rates to white communities, which ultimately leads to more arrests in these areas. In sentencing evaluations, prosecutors and judges decide whether or not to pursue charges for defendants who carry mandatory minimum sentences.
Research has shown that due to implicit biases, individuals are more likely to associate people of color with crime. A study found that, “when subjects were subliminally prompted to think about crime, they then focused more on Black male faces they were shown than on White male faces.”
These implicitly held biases also extend to prosecutors. According to a University of Texas ethics report, “Federal prosecutors are 1.75 times more likely to bring charges carrying ‘mandatory minimum’ sentences for Black defendants versus White defendants”.
Confirmation biases often reinforce mandatory minimums and the harsh sentences that come along with them. Media coverage often shows a harsh perspective of crimes in minority communities. Due to this general perception of crime, legislators ignore the reality that mandatory minimums have not actually deterred crime. Violent and drug-related crime is still at an all-time high, even with mandatory minimum sentences in place. While the “tough on crime” approach may give the illusion of short-term results, the reality is that broader research shows very little long-term success of mandatory minimums.
Ultimately, mandatory minimums take away judicial discretion and allow bias to go unchecked in the legal system. Judges are not given the opportunity to take situational context into account and are instead forced to hand down, oftentimes, too harsh sentences. Instead, power is given to prosecutors who are often driven by unconscious racial and class biases. Without the ability to change sentences, implicit biases lead to disproportionate outcomes for defendants of color. Ending mandatory minimums is key in addressing the systemic racism that is pervasive in the United States justice system.