The Violent Crime and Law Enforcement Act of 1994

Safety Valve was created in 1994 to reduce mandatory sentencing for drug offenders
under the following provisions:
the defendant does not have more than 1 criminal history point, as determined
under the sentencing guidelines;
the defendant did not use violence or credible threats of violence or possess a
firearm or other dangerous weapon (or induce another participant to do so) in
connection with the offense;
the offense did not result in death or serious bodily injury to any person;
the defendant was not an organizer, leader, manager, or supervisor of others in
the offense, as determined under the sentencing guidelines and was not
engaged in a continuing criminal enterprise, as defined in section 408 of the
Controlled Substances Act; and
not later than the time of the sentencing hearing, the defendant has truthfully
provided to the Government all information and evidence the defendant has
concerning the offense or offenses that were part of the same course of conduct
or of a common scheme or plan, but the fact that the defendant has no relevant
or useful other information to provide or that the Government is already aware of
the information shall not preclude a determination by the court that the defendant
has complied with this requirement.
In October 2011 a report was issued to assess the impact of United States v.
Booker mandatory minimum penalties on federal sentencing by the United States
Sentencing Commission.[17][clarification needed]
In 2013, United States Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr. announced that the Justice
Department would follow a new policy restricting mandatory minimum sentences in
certain drug cases. Prosecutions dropped, drug enforcement agent morale dropped,
and fentanyl and heroin overdoses soared, reported The Washington Post in 2019. In
Alleyne v. United States (2013) the Supreme Court held that increasing a sentence past
the mandatory minimum requirement must be submitted by a jury and found factual
beyond a reasonable doubt. It increases the burden on the prosecutor to prove that the
sentence is necessary for the individual crime by requiring that a mandatory minimum
sentence be denied for defendant unless they fulfill certain criteria. Attorney General
Holder held that the charges placed on an individual should reflect the uniqueness of
the case and consideration in assessing and fairly representing his/her given conduct.
This is supposed to prevent recidivism.
Criminal justice advocates in the United States argue that mandatory minimum
sentences are a major cause of the removal of the "bottom income half to quartile" of its
population from the general public. As part of police targeting and surveillance and often
harsh sentencing, mandatory sentencing often is proposed as "fairness" by those
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