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Judicial Conference Opposes Provisions in Anti-Gang Legislation The Conference, in a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, also questions the need for prosecuting gang members, many of them juveniles, in federal. "The primary responsibility of prosecuting juveniles has traditionally been for the states," the letter says. The Gang Prevention and Effective Deterrence Act of 2003 would authorize appropriations for hiring federal prosecutors to prosecute gangs. The bill also includes a variety of new minimum sentencing provisions. In the letter to Hatch, Conference secretary Leonidas Ralph Mecham said, "Since 1953, the Judicial Conference has maintained opposition to mandatory minimum sentences. The reason is manifest: mandatory minimums severely distort and damage the federal sentencing system. Mandatory minimums undermine the Sentencing Guideline regime Congress so carefully established in the Sentencing Reform Act o 1984 by preventing the rational development of guidelines that reduce unwarranted disparity and provide proportionality and fairness." The letter added: "Far from fostering certainty in punishment, mandatory minimums result in unwarranted sentencing disparity ... mandatory minimums require the sentencing court to impose the same sentence on offenders when sound policy and common sense call for reasonable differences in punishment." The Judicial Conference letter said the federal criminal justice system "has little experience and few resources to deal with more than the handful of juveniles that currently are in the federal system," and reiterated the Conference's view that "criminal prosecutions should be limited to those offenses that cannot or should not be prosecuted in state courts." |