Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Around the Blogs, Tuesday, July 17, 2007

  • Do the time, help the planet? Prevention Works has an interesting post on an English alternative sanction program that links community restitution to volunteer environmental groups and has reportedly had excellent (non)recidivism results. Read the post and figure out if we could make it work here. Lord knows the planet needs some help right now.
  • At Governing Through Crime, Jonathan Simon makes the point we need to make more often—in today’s crim just, it’s become more important to catch “someone” than to catch the right one. He doesn’t make this follow-up point—that’s why you see so little effort by law enforcement and prosecutors to restart cases in which the convicted turn out to be innocent and the real perpetrator is still out there, unpunished and probably active. In the giant play we’re performing, once you’ve done your role and drawn down the curtain, you just move on to your next performance. You certainly don’t worry about doing the right thing.
  • At Scientific America’s blog, an interesting report on a study showing that you want diversity on a jury because it promotes better thinking and deliberation. Hmm, imagine that. I bet prosecutors and defense will become great proponents of this research.

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