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Nils Christie: Empty the Prisons

By Steve Hall

That's the title of a post at Wired.com from the current issue of the magazine.  LINKFrom the death penalty to "three strikes" laws, Americans love tough responses to crime?but not necessarily smart ones. Nils Christie has a better idea: Stop treating lawbreakers like criminals."I don't like the term crime?it's such a big, fat, imprecise word," says the renowned University of Oslo criminologist. "There are only unwanted acts. How we perceive them depends on our relationship with those who carry them out." If a teenager swipes a wallet, we call it a crime. If he snakes a twenty from his dad, it's a family issue. Locking up the pickpocket only sets him up to learn worse tricks from hardened thugs...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on September 28, 2009 (boomark / email).