Deflation

A pardon for a home-loan scammer: $28,500.

Yes, prices seem to be falling.

You can now get a pardon for home-loan fraud for a mere $28,500.

Cheap!

There should be pressure on the RNC to give the money to charity and refuse any future gifts from this guy’s father.

I hope the new President will appoint a Pardon Counsel with instructions to pro-actively seek out people who got screwed by the system and don’t belong behind bars. With 180,000 Federal prisoners, it’s hard to believe that there aren’t at least a few thousand who don’t belong there: either cases of actual innocence, or cases in which the guildeline or mandatory sentence was grossly disproportionate.

Update Turns out the pardon wasn’t actually a done deal: the President sends a list to the Pardon Counsel to draw up the paperwork. Now that there’s been a fuss in the papers, the Prez has changed his mind.

Author: Mark Kleiman

Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out. Books: Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken) When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993) Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989) UCLA Homepage Curriculum Vitae Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com