Mandatory minimum drug laws sharply raised drug arrests and court caseloads.

Evidence

Congress enacted laws that increased penalties for drug trafficking and drug use, and state legislatures followed suit, prescribing mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders. The war on drugs produced a dramatic rise in drug arrests—up 134 percent nationally from 1980 to 1989. But prosecution of these offenders also imposed serious caseload pressures on state and federal courts. — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 1940

Categorization

• XREF: Links to course themes on how legislatures constrain judicial discretion and shift caseloads onto courts.
• SEED: Angle: how the war on drugs converted courts into processing pipelines, and whether that transformed judicial role.