Thursday, April 05, 2007

Around the Blogs, Thursday, April 5, 2007

  • Stephen Smith has a typically thought-provoking post up at Sex Crime Defender laying out what he considers to be the criteria for "sensible" sex offender registration and residency and work restrictions. As someone who does a, you know, Sex Crime Defender blog, his balance on this is something we should all consider.
  • A very linky post over at Sex Crimes Blog with some good stuff attached.
  • Think Outside the Cage has a bunch of good posts up, including one on an interview with a CO legislator that details the responsible thinking going on in that impressive state right now and one on the early release being considered in NV.
  • At Real Cost of Prisons, a couple of good links, one to a powerful UCLA study on the cost-benefit of the mandatory treatment initiative in CA (surprise, the returns on investment are good but could be better) and one to a meditation on "turning schools into prisons." I just finished a book on the subject of our criminal justice-ization of all our major social institutions that carries this theme. I'll try to get a review up in the next couple of weeks.
  • A conservative blogger calls for less incarceration for nonviolent drug offenders over at Grits for Breakfast. (And while you're there, check out the great work he continues to do on the TX Youth Commission story.)
  • Corrections Community (NIC's informative blog) alerts us to new NIC reports meant to assist states trying to improve management of P&P revocations in order to keep prison costs under control.
  • At Science Blogs, we get this study of the conditions under which power does tend to corrupt, with real implications for peer oversight, community pressure, and the importance of norm legitimacy enforced by knowledge that you will face social consequences for their violation.
  • And on the TECHNOCORRECTIONS front over at BrainEthics, a study on whether brain disorders (in this case, obsessive-compulsive disorder, which I don't make fun of because . . . excuse me, that picture on the wall is crooked, be right back) can be detected through use of MRIs. The implications for corrections sentencing? "The study clearly demonstrates that neuroscience is moving in the direction of single-subject analysis, and the application of advanced analysis methods to determine whether a given individual is structurally (or functionally) within the normal range. If the means are there, when will we see them being used — and misused? After all, if a brain scan has the close to 100% accuracy of telling whether a person is suffering from OCD, why not use it in the clinic right away? Or better, why not expect applicants to an important company position take such a scan? After all, if you suffer from OCD, you are less likely to be able to be in such a position, right? And while we’re at it, why not try for a similar approach for depression, anxiety, stress and introversion?" Or maybe, violence, addiction, sex perversion? Hmmmmm . . . ???? Ancient wisdom: If you build it, they will come.

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