Anyone who wants to pursue a Federal criminal justice reform bill should start by eliminating about 95% of the crimes in the Federal criminal code. Giving more judicial discretion in sentencing for crimes that are already outside the constitutional authority of the Federal government is a joke.
I can’t argue with that. But mandatory minimum sentencing is also a bit ridiculous. Every case, every convicted person, has their own context. A recent good example is the woman Trump recently commuted her sentence. Life in prison for one non-violent crime? Trump did the right thing but he can hardly sit down and review the tens of thousands of cases. Something now is better than nothing.
The only drawback is that doing something small gives them the excuse not to revisit the issue later to do as you suggest - strike the many absurd laws from the books.
We all know by now how they operate. They drop a dozen charges on a person for a single crime, threaten to prosecute their families, they sell their homes to pay for legal defense and fines, and 9 times out of 10 just cop a plea for 1 offense because the risk of facing a dozen counts and dragging their families into the mess is too high. It’s a shakedown, the prosecutors want the conviction so they drop the books on the accused to coerce a single confession. I am not a ‘soft on crime’ person, people need to obey the laws. But the system shouldn’t be a meat grinder either. You get busted, you should pay the penalty but the prosecutorial discretion is a big problem too. Rob a bank you don’t just get charged with bank robbery you get 2 or 3 gun crimes, fleeing scene of a crime, evading arrest, conspiracy charges, terrorist threat charges etc etc. It didn’t used to be that way but now as you note they have 95% more charges to throw at a person. If all people stopped plea bargaining the judicial system would grind to halt. Not enough courts and judges to handle all those trials.