>Mandatory minimums and three-strikes laws have no immediate effects on
>incarceration rates, since the affected individuals are going to prison
>anyway.
Mandatory minimums insist that someone go to prison who might not have without them, so that directly influences what the statisticians blandly call "admissions." And mandatory minimums and three-strikes laws slow down the rate of release, which also swells the prison pop.
I figured, though, that they NYT wouldn't have given such prominence to a critique of mass incarceration if there wasn't an official rethink going on somewhere. Thanks for confirming my suspicions!
Doug