Wednesday, February 07, 2007

News and Blogs Together, Wednesday, February 7, 2007

  • The Justice Reinvestment Project of the Pew Charitable Trusts, DOJ, and the Council of State Governments' Justice Center is making AZ part of its assistance effort. Nice review of AZ's problems and what the project is trying to accomplish. Wouldn't it be nice to have a federal government interested in this sort of thing?
  • I noted a few weeks back that WI's governor wants to create a body there that would examine disparities in the state's prison/jail system, all the while having a thing called a sentencing commission already in operation. Well, a senator from OK is proposing a task force to look at the state's prison/jail population problems. Wanna guess if OK has a sentencing commission?
  • Research in Child Development indicates that the old "some kids are just born bad" concept may have some legs. Looks at identical and fraternal twins and their ease at confrontation and arguing compared to their parents'. More fuel for the genetic turn of technocorrections and the things they can do with genes now and in the future. Didn't say it was good fuel.
  • Finally, a good piece from Governing's blog related to things we've talked about here. Seems a little girl was killed by a driver speeding through a stop sign in Chicago. So the city council raised fines to hammer such drivers. But the new level of the fine gets the driver to court. Where police will have show up for the expected 20,000 NEW DEFENDANTS coming to trial. Police off patrol. 20,000 new cases. You squeeze the toothpaste tube one place, pushes up another. And please don't tell me someone with sense couldn't have seen this coming. As the piece ends, "As we all know, or should know, the law of unintended consequences means that there will be further unintended and unforeseen consequences to such laws. Acting in haste and out of emotion is a poor way to puzzle out what all the consequences may be." IOW, what will be on corrections sentencing's headstone.

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