Defendants are regularly condemned to years, decades, or life in prison for minor infractions because of minimum sentencing statutes. If judges had more discretion in sentencing, then sentences could be more proportional to the crime, more specific to the individual defendant, and minimize the negative impact of minimum sentencing laws without inherently needing those laws repealed.
"Virginia abolished parole in 1995 for the types of crimes covered by the three-strikes law – but it was still used to deny parole to anyone convicted of three qualifying crimes, even when sentences for all three were handed down at the same time."
Prison Legal News
July 6, 2018
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