It’s cheaper to watch offenders closely when they’re not in prison than it is to pay their room & board.
Archive for the ‘Prisons and penal policy’ Category
Perhaps despite himself, David Brooks raises some good points about public sector sustainability in an otherwise-wretched column.
The way to spend less money on prisons is to have fewer prisoners.
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.
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.
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 [...]
…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 [...]
There’s enough money in the prison budget to get it done. The trick is having fewer prisoners.
Letting ICE monitor its own detention facilities turned out to be a bad idea. Some heads should roll.
Want law enforcement that’s really tough on Mexicans? Try Mexico’s. Only seven years until accused there are presumed innocent, and meanwhile the cops aren’t afraid to do what’s needed to get the job done. Like lie under oath. Roberto and Layda are students in my shop (Roberto is my PhD advisee), and I am over-the-top [...]



