Links work now.
New York Times: Length of sentences causes the huge U.S. inmate count that dwarfs other nations.

1920 to 2007 chart. The National Rifle Association is largely responsible for pushing through lengthy mandatory-minimum drug sentencing. Even for cannabis growing. NRA is today's paramilitary Brown Shirts and Hitler Youth promoting vast concentration camps mostly for nonviolent "undesirables." Even otherwise mainstream commentators like George Noory of Coast to Coast AM mindlessly repeat the "tough on crime" and "law and ORDER," stormtrooper door-buster, SWAT slogans.

Just like the Nazis and their militia partners, the SA brown shirts. Working hand in glove. Like Republicans and the Ku Klux Klan remnants that formed today's right-wing idiot militias.. The "Southern Strategy." Politics and labor camps. Gitmo writ large.

========Please forward--------------------

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Sentencing_Commission

United States Sentencing Commission

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The United States Sentencing Commission is an independent agency of the judicial branch of the federal government of the United States. It is responsible for articulating the sentencing guidelines for the United States federal courts. The Commission promulgates the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, which replaced the prior system of indeterminate sentencing that allowed trial judges to give sentences ranging from probation to the maximum statutory punishment for the offense.

The commission was created by the Sentencing Reform Act provisions of the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984. The constitutionality of the commission was challenged as a congressional encroachment on the power of the executive but upheld by the Supreme Court in Mistretta v. United States, 488 U.S. 361 (1989).

Unlike many special-purpose "study" commissions within the executive branch, Congress established the U.S. Sentencing Commission as a permanent, independent agency within the judicial branch. The seven voting members on the Commission are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, and serve six-year terms. Commission members may be reappointed to further terms with the consent of the Senate. No more than three of the commissioners may be federal judges, and no more than four may belong to the same political party. The United States Attorney General and the chair of the United States Parole Commission sit as nonvoting ex officio members of the Commission.

[edit] Current membership

The following table lists commissioners as of March 2009.

Member	Occupation	Date appointed
Ricardo H. Hinojosa (Chair)	Judge, United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas	June 26, 2003
Ruben Castillo (Vice chair)	Judge, United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois	November 12, 1999
William K. Sessions III (Vice chair)	Chief Judge, United States District Court for the District of Vermont	November 12, 1999
William B. Carr, Jr. (Vice chair)	Former United States attorney, Eastern District of Pennsylvania	December 5, 2008
Dabney Friedrich (Commissioner)	Former White House Assistant Counsel	March 1, 2007
Beryl A. Howell (Commissioner)	Managing Director, Stroz Friedberg, LLC	November 21, 2004
Jonathan J. Wroblewski (Ex-officio)	Deputy Director of the Office of Policy and Legislation, Criminal Division, U.S. Department of Justice
Edward F. Reilly, Jr. (Ex-officio)	Chair, United States Parole Commission