I guess my question is if mandatory minimum sentences can be seen to work in this situation, why don't we use them for everything? Why do we need judges? Why don't we have politicians passing sentence by remote control? If mandatory minimum sentences work, why aren't they more widespread? Why are jurisdictions backing away from them, rather than running to embrace them?
I think the onus is on defenders of mandatory minimums to show that they in fact deter, because the evidence doesn't.