Friday, August 04, 2006

Around the Blogs 8-4-06

Via The Real Cost of Prisons, Senator Sessions (R-AL) has proposed semi-significant reduction of the disparity between amounts of crack and powder cocaine necessary to trigger mandatory minimums on the federal level. The gap would still be large, but narrowed, a step of sorts to ending the differential treatment of minorities (and not in a good way) in the federal system. Coming from Senator Sessions, it will have a "Nixon to China" effect and more likely pass. Every long journey . . . . CrimProf Blog points to a Wall Street Journal book review of what sounds like an interesting book, Lying, Cheating, and Stealing: A Moral Theory of White-Collar Crime. Mark Godsey contends that the book is long on moral philosophy but short on moral psychology, using Ken Lay as the benchmark. Sounds interesting. Let us know if you've already read it. . . . A news note at Crime and Consequences finding an Atlanta Journal Constitution article about the federal judge certifying 10,000 registered sex offenders as a class for a fed lawsuit in GA. . . . Talk Left alerts us to NC's creation of the first state Innocence Commission, a law signed by Gov. Mike Easley, former prosecutor. The movement has just been operating for a few years now. As with sentencing commissions, NC may set a model here for future diffusion of policy across the states. We'll let you know.

No comments: