Around the Blogs 8-29-06

Quick hits today. Kent Scheidegger at Crime and Consequences alerts us to a report in the UK about incarceration rates in England and Wales being higher than the US'. You think it's the language? Maybe this is a good time to have a national language here, like Spanish or . . . no, not French [that should get some comments]. . . . The Real Cost of Prisons gives us a Neil Peirce column on the costs and benefits of our drug war, including the effort by the state bar in WA to get King County serious about treatment options. Pretty familiar stuff, but a quick reference. I liked the end the best, where they point out how marijuana use by teens has apparently gone down in states where medical use has been legalized. Says a quote, "It's not as cool when grandma uses marijuana for cancer pain." There's your next anti-drug commercial. . . . And finally, via Prevention Works, the blog of the National Crime Prevention Council, we get an update on the latest issue of the Western Criminology Review devoted solely to reentry research and book reviews. Speaking of the latter, two of them were written by extremely bright young people who worked for me when I was with the MD sentencing commission, Jill Farrell and Dave Bierie. For any future employers, they're ABD, experienced, and very pleasant to have around. Just saying. And they didn't even pay me. Yet.