Mandatory Minimum Drug Sentences: Throwing Away the Key or the Taxpayers' Money? - Softcover

In response to public concern over disparity of sentencing by judges and brevity of terms served by criminals, state legislatures and the Congress have written into law minimum sentences for specific crimes. In this report, we estimate the cost-effectiveness of mandatory minimum sentences for crimes related to cocaine distribution. These estimates are made relative to the cost-effectiveness of spending additional resources on enforcement without mandatory minimums and on drug treatment. Our central effectiveness measure is reduction of the nation's cocaine consumption, although we also examine reduction of cocaine-related crimes, along with decrease in cocaine spending, which is related to such crimes.Because this report may be read by people with diverse interests, it is divided into two parts. Readers interested principally in narcotics-control and criminal-justice policy may wish to stop at the end of Part I. Part II has been prepared mainly for those also interested in the role and techniques of mathematical modeling in policy analysis, although some effort has been devoted to make it understandable to those not expert in this area. This research was supported by a gift from Richard B. Wolf of Richland Mills and by funding from The Ford Foundation. This study was carried out within RAND's Drug Policy Research Center. The center's work is supported by The Ford Foundation, other foundations, government agencies, corporations, and individuals. It carries out extensive assessments of drug problems at local and national levels. Those interested in further information should contact the center at RAND's Santa Monica address.

Jonathan P. Caulkins (Ph.D., Operations Research, M.I.T.) is Director of the Rand Pittsburgh Office. His research interests include developing mathematical models of social policy problems and problems and policies concerning drugs, crime, and violence. Peter Rydell (U. Pennsylvania PhD Regional Science) is a Senior Social Scientist at Rand whose research interests include Military Personnel, Criminal Justice, Civil Justice, Rent Control, Housing Policy, and Welfare Caseloads. William Schwabe (Ph.D., Public Policy Analysis, Rand Graduate School, Santa Monica, California) is a Senior Policy Analyst at Rand with broad experience in gaming and other interactive policy planning exercises, as well as computer modeling, decision support, and operations analysis. James Chiesa (M.S., Environmental Science , Indiana University; M.A., Zoology , Indiana University) is a Communications Analyst at Rand.