ABSTRACT
Mandatory penalties do not work. The record is clear from research in the 1950s, the 1970s, and the 1980s. From research in the 1970s and 1980s, the weight of the evidence clearly shows that enactment of mandatory penalties has either no demonstrable marginal deterrent effects or short-term effects that rapidly waste away. The reason is that most elected officials who support such laws are only secondarily interested in their effects; officials’ primary interests are rhetorical and symbolic. This chapter retells a story, at least three centuries old, of the political appeal and practical limits of mandatory sentencing laws. The retelling is occasioned by the publication of a US Sentencing Commission report on mandatory penalties in the federal courts and by the possibility that prison crowding, budgetary crises, and a changing professional climate may make more public officials willing to be reminded of what we have long known about mandatory penalties.
