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Criminal Law

: Sentencing Law and Policy

New York Times op-ed urging "Getting Smart on Crime"

By Douglas A. Berman

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Today's New York Times included this op-ed by Charles Blow titled "Getting Smart on Crime." Though the piece cover a lot of ground that should be familiar to regular readers of this blog, these excerpts (and the chart reprinted here) seemed worth emphasizing: Much of the rise in the prison population was because of draconian mandatory sentencing laws that are illogical ? sociologically and economically. On the sociological side, as the criminal justice expert Joel Dvoskin of the University of Arizona explained to me, data overwhelmingly support the idea that locking up low-risk, nonviolent offenders makes them worse, not better. A study from a decade ago that was published in the journal American Psychologist put it this way: ?Department of corrections data show that about a fourth of those initially imprisoned for nonviolent crimes are sentenced a second time for committing a violent offense...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on August 15, 2009 (boomark / email).