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Accounting for the skewed punishment accountability in state crime codes

By Douglas A. Berman

A helpful reader alerted me to this interesting column from the Philadelphia Inquirer, which is headlined ""Pa. punishments often go beyond the crime."  The piece reports on important work being done by Professor Paul Robinson and his students concerning the perceptions and realities of sentencing in one state's criminal justice system.  Here are a few highlights: Did you know that peeking at someone's e-mail in Pennsylvania carries a stiffer maximum penalty than keeping a slave?  Or that state law looks more harshly at someone who stole $2,000 than someone who sold a child? These are just some of the weirder quirks in the piecemeal approach to lawmaking documented by a Penn research group for the state legislature.  University of Pennsylvania law professor Paul Robinson had his students determine this fall whether criminal laws were written in an orderly way...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on January 19, 2010 (boomark / email).