Members of the Virginia General Assembly are debating crime and punishment – including the use of mandatory minimums.
Mandatory minimum sentences became popular in the 1990s, a time when law and order lawmakers added so many offenses to the list that Virginia prisons strained to accommodate all the inmates. Even now, some lawmakers are trying to add new mandatory minimum sentences. Republican Senator Danny Diggs of York County introduced a bill to double the mandatory minimum sentence for the use of a firearm in a second offense of murder, assault or robbery.
"You may do something really stupid and do things with a gun the first time," Diggs says. "But when you go to do that a second time, it shows that you have no regard whatsoever for the safety of our citizens."
But Democrats say the era of mass incarceration is over.
"We have been doing a very good job at ensuring that we’re funding mental health services, that we are funding our community service boards, all of the things that attribute to crime and crimes especially involving weapons," says Senator Jennifer Caroll Foy, a Democrat from Prince William County. "Things such as increasing the minimum wage, ensuring that we are attacking poverty. There are other structural things that we can do besides locking people up, throwing away the key and thinking that they're going to come out better than when they went in."
The bill to add a new mandatory minimum failed, and the bill to increase the minimum wage is moving forward.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
