I’m skeptical of the very term prisoner “rehabilitation.” It seems rooted in a misguided sense of paternalism, implying there is some criminal class just waiting to be cured by us, the enlightened class. Rehabilitation implying there is something to “habilitate” in the first place. And this hogwash it is the very foundation upon which our whole prison system was invented.…
Tag: incarceration
Conservatives for Prison Reform
The United States has more more men & women in prison than any other nation including Russia and China…. The 95% conviction rate reached by threats of long sentences, intimidation, lies and prosecutorial abuse has got to be reckoned with now, not later. So says Duke Cunningham, an imprisoned conservative Republican, in Slate.
WWJD? The death penalty and Jesus
Texas just executed its 466th murderer in the last three decades (not surprisingly, the guy being executed was black. Black murderers are much more likely to be executed than are white murderers.) But I’m not here to defend murderers. I’m not even really even against the death penalty. (As long as we can be certain the person is guilty… which…
Less Prison, Less Crime
Newt Gingrich and Pat Nolan in the Washington Post on the need for less prison. We urge conservative legislators to lead the way in addressing an issue often considered off-limits to reform: prisons.
Private Prisons in Maine
1) Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest for-profit prison operator, spends $25,000 for Maine Republican candidate Paul LePage. He wins the election. But state law prohibits private prisons. This kind of law is one of the few good things to come from prison guard union lobbying. 2) A few weeks before becoming governor, according to Lance Tapley in…
Lacking Bail Money, NYC Petty Cons Average 15 Days In Jail
Mosi Secret of the Times reports on nonfelony defendants arrested in the city in 2008: In more than three-quarters of the 117,064 cases, defendants were released on their own recognizance. In 19,137 cases from that year, bail was set at $1,000 or less. The report found that 87 percent of the defendants in those cases did not post bail and…
Convicted prisoners to get vote
In the UK. According to the BBC. Something about “human rights,” sez the E.U. Bunch of socialists.
DMV with barbed wire and guns
There are really two philosophies in running prisons. Some wardens and officers feel that the sentence is the punishment, not the way they treat them, and that they should treat the inmates as human beings, and that they have a future, and that they need to be prepared to return to the community. These wardens take the word ‘correction’ seriously.…
Missouri Tells Judges Cost of Sentences
Fascinating. And I think a great idea. Cost is irrelevant only to those who don’t pay. From the New York Times: But critics — prosecutors especially — dismiss the idea as unseemly. They say that the cost of punishment is an irrelevant consideration when deciding a criminal’s fate and that there is a risk of overlooking the larger social costs…
Cost of Booking
Here’s another simple number we should know but really don’t: What’s it cost to arrest somebody? Seems like it matters (at least to the taxpayer) if the choice is between a citation and an arrest. Part of the problem in figuring this out is that the expense is divided between different departments, jurisdictions, and budgets (police, courts, sheriff, jail, prosecutor,…