If S1789 or the Fair Sentencing Act is made retroactive it will not only help thousands of non violent offenders get back to their families and start making a positive difference in their lives and communities it will save the taxpayers millions of dollars. S. 1789 will help 3,000 inmates and save 42 million over 5 years...that means if they make it retroactive 20,000 inamtes could be helped and thus saving some where in the ball park of 280 million.

Although Congress intended mandatory sentences to target "king pins" and managers in drug distribution networks, the U.S. Sentencing Commission reports that only 5.5 percent of all federal crack cocaine defendants and 11 percent of federal drug defendants are high-level drug dealers.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission and the Department of Justice have both concluded that mandatory sentencing fails to deter crime. Furthermore, mandatory minimums have worsened racial and gender disparities and have contributed greatly toward prison overcrowding. Mandatory minimum sentencing is costly and unjust. Mandatory sentencing does not eliminate sentencing disparities; instead it shifts decision-making authority from judges to prosecutors, who operate without accountability. Mandatory minimums fail to punish high-level dealers. Finally, mandatory sentences are responsible for sending record numbers of women and people of color to prison.

• Prison Overcrowding More than 80 percent of the increase in the federal prison population from 1985 to 1995 is due to drug convictions.
  
  
• Racial Injustice In 1986, the year Congress enacted federal mandatory drug sentences, the average federal drug sentence for African Americans was 11 percent higher than for whites. Four years later, the average federal drug sentence for African Americans was 49 percent higher.
  
  
• Women Between 1986 and 1996, the number of women in prison for drug law violations increased by 421 percent. This led U.S. Bureau of Prisons Director Kathleen Hawk-Sawyer to testify before Congress, "The reality is, some 70-some percent of our female population are low-level, nonviolent offenders. The fact that they have to come into prison is a question mark for me. I think it has been an unintended consequence of the sentencing guidelines and the mandatory minimums."