Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Grits for Breakfast

Criminal Law

: Grits for Breakfast

Message received: PR valued more than justice by Williamson DA

By Gritsforbreakfast

Good public policy is about outcomes. Bad public policy is frequently about grandstanding.If you want to "send a message," rent a billboard. That's not the purpose of legislation, prosecution powers, parole decisions, or other functions of the justice system, which must be judged instead IMO by public safety outcomes.In fact, whenever you hear a politician of any stripe calling for government to do something to "send a message," you can be pretty sure that whatever they're proposing will do more harm than good. That's true in nearly every instance, across the political spectrum. Such rhetoric shows the speaker has allowed their public relations goals to supersede their public policy goals. Reported Austin's KEYE-TV (3/18):A judge has sentenced a woman described by Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley as a "serial drug dealer...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on March 19, 2008 (boomark / email).