Sentencing Overhaul Proposed in Senate with Bipartisan Backing
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
The basic argument is that the explosion in prison population is driven mostly by changing attitudes/behavior of the prosecuting DA's in the past few decades. They have simply chosen to go after felony charges more frequently than in the past. This is problematic because they are elected and there is no federal-level fix that can be applied.
In comparison, we generally have two elections every 5 years. One for our MP in Westminster, and one for our local council and these are often held simultaneously. For many people, that's it. Some cities also have Mayoral elections, and there can be town or parish council elections as well but whether these exist or not is very local. I don't think we have any direct elections to administrative positions, unless you count Mayors. There might be some rare local exceptions to that but they're most likely purely ceremonial.
In the federal govt AIUI there are no elections for executive offices other than the presidency, so only president, vice-president, senators and representatives are elected. But many state and local executives are elected, as determined by local legislation.
http://images.dailykos.com/images/134822/large/Elected_offic... gives a breakdown of how many elected officials there are at various levels of government.
>Well, the real growth in the prison population comes from county-level district attorneys sending violent people to prison.
Mandatory minimums should be removed entirely, as no law can cover all circumstances. There will always be cases where the mandatory minimum is unjust.