I'm not aware of many minimum sentences, but I haven't studied the question, so I don't know. I'm more familiar with the importing of drugs and the jurisprudence that was discussed in that case.
Nobody gets very excited about a minimum sentence of seven days for, say, drunken driving, because seven days goes by rather quickly. When you get into five years or in that area, it's a little more significant, and you know I'm sure from your own experience that not all criminals are the same. Not all kidnappings are the same. It would be an unusual case in which you would think of a suspended sentence for a stranger performing a kidnapping.
You have to think of someone with diminished responsibility. Should that person be treated exactly the same as a hardened criminal who's operating solely for cash? It's just the variation in people that pushed me towards the view that a minimum sentence is something that I find has a lot of flaws.