Florida legislators talk of repealing mandatory minimums for nonviolent offenses

As reported in this local article, headlined "In major Tallahassee reversal, mandatory sentences called a waste of taxpayer money," there is a notable movement to repeal some mandatory minimum sentences in the Sunshine State.  Here are the details:

Cynthia Powell is serving a 25-year sentence for selling 35 pills for $300 in 2002. Her incarceration at Homestead Correctional Institution costs taxpayers an average of $18,064 per year — or $451,600 by the time she is released in 2023.

The Florida Senate Criminal Justice Committee concluded Tuesday that’s money poorly spent. It voted unanimously for SB 290, which would end minimum mandatory sentences for nonviolent offenses like Powell’s.  The measure represents a major shift from the tough-on-crime bills of the last two decades that filled prisons and created what both liberals and conservatives now believe has been a subclass of lifers in jail and a waste of tax money.  The “prison diversion bill” would save the state $131 million in avoided costs and put 1,001 fewer people in jail, said Sen. Daryl Rouson, D-St. Petersburg, the bill’s sponsor.

The measure would allow judges to depart from the 118 minimum mandatory sentences in Florida law but excludes drug traffickers.  It restores the Florida Sentencing Commission, which existed from 1982 to 1997, but limits its scope to determining the severity ranking that adds points to an offender’s record based on certain offenses. Anyone who commits a violence offense, is not eligible for the court’s leniency.

Reforming Florida’s legacy of harsh sentencing is one of several reforms being pushed by a coalition of liberal and conservative advocates that were passed unanimously by the Senate committee on Tuesday. “We are in an interesting juncture in our society and the Legislature, where Democrats and Republicans in both chambers agree that it’s really time to look at our criminal justice system and start to make some reforms,” said Sen. Randolph Bracy, D-Orlando, chairman of the committee....

Greg Newburn, director of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a conservative group that supports ending mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent crimes, said “dozens of states have already made the decision to move in this area.” They include Georgia, Oklahoma and North Carolina. “The results are uniform,” he said. “We get lower crime. We get smaller prison populations. They’ve closed prisons and saved tens of millions of dollars.”

If Powell, the Homestead inmate, had sold two fewer pills in 2002, she would have gotten a 15-year sentence, he said. If she sold them today, it would be a seven-year sentence. Instead, she won’t be released until 2023. “There are many other people in similar situations who simply don’t need to be there,” he said. “It’s a waste of money. We receive no public safety benefit whatsoever.”

His organization supports full repeal of mandatory minimum drug laws — as states such as Michigan, New York and Delaware have done — but he considers the piecemeal progress proposed by the Senate “a good reform.”

Jim DeBeaugrine of the Center for Advanced Justice, a sentencing reform advocacy group, warned the committee that giving drug offenders shorter sentences will only keep them out of prison if they receive treatment for substance abuse and mental health issues. “If you try to do it on the cheap, the results of this outcome are compromised,” he said. “The only way you will ever end the issue of mass incarceration is you’ve got to stop putting so many people in prison.”