Wednesday, February 07, 2007

More (and Better?) Posts

It’s our pleasure to welcome three new bloggers to Corrections Sentencing to broaden the perspective and give you more to think about. Two of them, you may recognize from other posts here. Russell Butler, the exec director of the MD Crime Victims Resource Center and long-time MD sent commission member, will be signing on. You may remember his posts on the right on “So You Want to Be a Sentencing Commissioner?” I’ve worked with a lot of commissioners but none better than Russell. Another new contributor will be Ben Barlyn, currently exec director of NJ’s sentencing commission. Ben does a great job keeping his commission informed, as we’ve noted here many times, as well as a keen eye on news items that he’s frequently passed along. Now he gets to post them himself. And we’re sure you’ll enjoy the energy and views he brings to the blog.

Finally, the weirder one—not the blogger, the perspective. When I was directing the WI sent commission, we got incredibly lucky to have this hyper-competent undergrad wander in and want to intern for us (for free unfortunately that first of two summers). Well, Joe Fontaine is now in the La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin, and he’ll be popping some posts in when his studies permit. What will he post on? Anything he wants, I suppose, but we’ve asked him to tend to a clear need in the corr sent policy arena. Because academe’s claim on corr sentencing went early to law schools and criminology, with an acre or two for psychologists, the public policy community has for the most part ignored what we do. Which is too bad, since its models and concepts have a definite relevance for what we do. So we’ve asked Joe to take what he’s learning from the very fine folks at La Follette (nothing but good memories of them here) and connect it to his experience with sentencing and bureaucracy in WI. We’re looking forward to what he comes up with.

They won’t be posting daily (I don’t think), but we’re certain that you’ll find what they do post very helpful and interesting. We may have worn a little thin by now, so this will give you a break from us as well. Please let us know what you think and give them some props when they nail one. Which I predict will mean a whole lot of props.

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