Mandatory minimum jail sentences.

Okay you guy in the Land of the Free here's a few questions for you since you all have "mandatory minimum jail sentences".

(1)Are mandatory minimum jail sentences affective?

(2)Are they affective for reducing pot smokers and growers?
How much does it cost is tax money to keep a single pot head in jail for a year, or six months?

(3)After a few years of jailing pot heads, and medical cannabis users will there still be room in jails for murders, rapists, and thieves?

Okay did some looking up news stores and such:
http://www.cbc.ca/canadavotes/realitycheck/crimetime.html

In Canada  the cost to keep an inmate in a provincial jail $52,000 a year. If they stayed there for a year, it would cost an extra $300 million just to incarcerate them.
and for Federal a Medium- and minimum-security inmates cost more than $70,000 a year.

Federal and provincial institutions are already filled to capacity.

The last provincial jail built in Ontario was a "no-frills" superjail in Lindsay that cost almost $79 million in 2002, and is designed to house about 1,100 inmates.

Constructing new jails just for the 6,000 inmates(potheads) who would have previously been out under house arrest would cost Canadian taxpayers about $400 million.

So we have $400 million for constructing enough jails to keep one years worth of low level non violent offenders. Plus $300 million a year there after.

$3500 million tax dollars spent over five years!

Now how much tax money is Canada's Prime minister Stephan Harper spending on our health care?

6000 low level offenders = If they stayed there for a year, it would cost an extra $300 million just to incarcerate them.

So? Force them to live in inhumane conditions, problem solved.

(1)Force them to live in inhumane conditions
(2)Get more gov tax grants
(3)Build more prisons
profit = free money and all the ares raping you can handle..

>>1
manditory minimums are on the way out (slowly).  the supreme court recently ruled on whether judges can deviate from the man/min's - they can.