The Eighth Amendment to our Constitution reads as follows: "… nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." Yet, somehow American jurisprudence permits and thereby utilizes sentencing guidelines that impose mandatory minimums on certain classified crimes, in which specific Class A felonies, Class B felonies, Class C felonies, and Class D felonies, in addition to other high crimes and misdemeanors, are subject to mandated minimum incarceration penalties.
The fundamental problem with mandatory minimums is that, by definition, this means that crimes, in and of themselves, or activities which have been classified as crimes by legislative authority, have seen expressed by that legislation to not perceive the humanity of the person that is the perpetrator of the crime, but rather, instead, simply boxes in human beings into nice, neat, and organized categories -- without taking into account, the fully relevant aspects of a given person's life history and the circumstances surrounding each one of these crimes, on an individual level, and thereby taking into consideration all of the pertinent facts in regards to the merits of a given case, therein.
It is cruel to deny any human being, their unalienable right to have their part of the story fully recognized; in which, such is marginalized and thereby superseded by the law, which simply states: "if this is so, then this is the minimum penalty that must be paid, no matter any extenuating or mitigating circumstances, involved." Further to the point, justice in America as practiced, is practiced in a manner in which the sentencing of those that have money, or good access to outstanding attorneys, will, in and of themselves, virtually always be able to circumvent minimum penalties, or the worse of minimum penalties, by either the combative negotiation of charges so made, thereupon subsequently agreed upon by both parties, or by all the usual strategies and appeals that good attorneys are able to do, to deny justice having even the hint of being equally applied, for all those accused of the very same crime.
The bottom line is that most mandatory minimums are really just another form of oppressing those that have little or nothing, so that, essentially those that are poor and ill-educated are subject to mandatory minimums; whereas all those with money, and the right connections, need not worry about suffering through the same sort of dire fate, because they are often able to negotiate a successful plea deal which while subjecting them to some sort of penalty, it will subsequently be a penalty which is often significantly less than what a mandatory minimum would have been; yet this option is not available for the underclass of Americans.
So too, mandatory minimums are unusual, because it is unusual when any just court of law, predetermines in every circumstance, without exception, that a certain specific penalty must be paid, without taking into full account, whether such a penalty, given all the facts and information provided: is fair, is reasoned, is humane, and is consistent with the principles of the country which contends that it is the epitome of a great republic, with life, liberty, and justice for all. For when such a country specifically creates jurisprudence which is anathema to its founding Constitutional principles, that is both unusual, as well as being cruel.