Finally, it seems as if somebody is starting to "get it". I wonder what will happen to silence him, no way are the big business prisons going to allow a reduction in population. No Way.

I can not tell if this is really a good faith measure of reform or just blowing smoke up the public's collective posterior.

That there is a fundamental flaw in this proposal cannot be ignored. A key aspect, maybe the key aspect of mandatory minimum impact on law remains unaltered. And I suspect that is the main purpose of this so called reform. By taking all the leeway out of a judge’s courtroom, mandatory minimum sentencing has moved all the power to the prosecutors' discretion. As many legal observers have noted, mandatory minimums have had an impact far beyond the effect on any prisoner's sentence. One that has changed the nature of criminal law in this country.   Prosecutors hold charges with high mandatory minimums over defendants’ heads. Whether they have merit or not. Long before any trial proceedings can take place, a defendant’s only opportunity to avoid an excessive risk of long prison time is to negotiate to plead guilty to a lesser charge. Cases and the merits of evidence in them only rarely reach a courtroom for review. I do not believe our criminal system should be so one sided where the prosecutor holds all the power. They now are judge, jury and executioner all rolled into one,  in practice now rarely ever held in check by the courts.The criminal court system you grew up with is not the system we have today.

This new policy does nothing to reform that balance of power. It might just make it worse. Watch for what judges' associations have to say.

Overcriminalization has thus left us in a peculiar place: Though people suspected of a crime have extensive due process rights in dealing with the police, and people charged with a crime have even more extensive due process rights in court, the actual decision of whether or not to charge a person with a crime is almost completely unconstrained. Yet, because of overcharging and plea bargains, the decision to prosecute is probably the single most important event in the chain of criminal procedure.

After hearing the officer add another charge onto me at the station I can't argue with this; in his words "Add on this also just so something sticks".  Nothing is going to stick but I'm going to pay a lot to a lawyer to clear this up, this is just stupid.