H.B. 181 corrects the damage of mandatory sentencing laws

The problem with crafting legislation in the heat of epidemics is the tendency to not schedule a continual review of the need for the policy.

This is the case with minimum-mandatory laws addressing drug possession for the last three decades.

The result has been a swelling of the nation's, and Delaware's, prison system with first-time, nonviolent offenders. They receive lengthy sentences in many cases for possessing an amount of drugs equal to a package of Sweet & Low sugar substitute. And they are summarily being warehoused among a master class of veteran criminals.

What's worse, the one reasonable entity to determine judicial fairness in such cases is prevented from doing so. Compulsory sentencing requires judges to ignore their better wisdom and experience in favor of the prosecution's arguments and mandated sentencing guidelines.

For society at large the cost has been the lost opportunity to target users into needed treatment and hopefully changed behavior.

Illegal drug use is no longer a new scourge on our society. The absence of a will by our state's legislators to make the punishment fit the crime is.

These realities are why House Bill 181 is before the General Assembly. Passage would restore sentencing discretion for drug crimes to Delaware's nationally distinguished judiciary. A majority of the members of the General Assembly are sponsors of the bill.

This is the overdue review of a failed drug policy perpeteuated by legislatures of the 1970s and 1980s that has lasted too long and continues to cost Delawareans too much.