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Today’s New York Times includes an amazing story by Adam Liptak and Lisa Fayle Petak. Its opener speaks for itself in underscoring the misguided mindset of our justice system. More than a decade ago, a 14-year-old boy killed his stepbrother in a scuffle that escalated from goofing around with a blowgun to an angry threat [...]
Archive for the ‘Prisons and penal policy’ Category
January 19th, 2011
Category: Crime Control, Prisons and penal policy
Newt Gingrich thinks that over-incarceration is wasteful government spending. Not the best reason to let people out of cells, but it has some political zing in the current environment.
December 6th, 2010
Category: California Politics, Prisons and penal policy
As the Supreme Court debates whether to force California to finally reduce overcrowding in its wretched prison system, Justice Alito asks “If 40,000 prisoners are going to be released…[do] you really believe that if you were to come back here two years after that you would be able to say they haven’t contributed to an [...]
November 11th, 2010
Category: Crime Control, Prisons and penal policy
It’s cheaper to watch offenders closely when they’re not in prison than it is to pay their room & board.
October 12th, 2010
Category: City of Angels, Liberalism, Prisons and penal policy, Public management, Unions and organizing, Watching Conservatives
Perhaps despite himself, David Brooks raises some good points about public sector sustainability in an otherwise-wretched column.
September 20th, 2010
Category: Crime Control, Prisons and penal policy
The way to spend less money on prisons is to have fewer prisoners.
September 9th, 2010
Why doesn’t the story of the Woman Taken in Adultery from John 8 imply that Christians should oppose capital punishment? I’m looking for authoritative answers from within the tradition.
August 16th, 2010
Category: Crime Control, Prisons and penal policy
Graeme Wood of The Atlantic gets it: the combination of drug-testing and position-monitoring technology with a swift, predictable sanctions process means that Bentham’s Panopticon no longer requires beds, walls, or guards.
August 8th, 2010
The effects of the federal crack vs. powder cocaine sentencing disparity were well-documented at the federal level, but such assessments did not capture the damage inflicted in the states that adopted doppelganger legislation in the late 1980s. Collectively, the states imprison over six times as many people as does the federal government, making state-level reform [...]
July 31st, 2010
Category: California Politics, Education policy, Policy Analysis, Prisons and penal policy, Taxation
…are about the same size and shape. It’s an iron law of sound household management, ignore it at your peril, and I know you will recognize its absolute unvarying truth, that you can put a baseball in your fruitbowl only if you’re willing to take one apple out of it. So what? Does any sane [...]
