"Today's would-be reformers would do well to remember that, and to consider the possibility that the best models for productive change may not come from contemporary legislation or court decisions, but from a past that has largely disappeared from our consciousness. Sometimes, the best road forward faces back." -- William J. Stuntz in The Collapse of American Criminal Justice (2011)
A "Get Out of Jail Free Card" Will Not Work Most of America's prison reform advocates only approach the issues from the standpoint of the prisoner-as-victim. Law enforcement policies under the prevailing liberal view are characterized as the main cause and perpetrator of mass incarceration. We rarely hear these folks tell us what punishment the guilty should have or how criminals should accept the consequences of their crimes. Many times they propose drug treatment, Drug Court, therapy, commitment to mental institutions, rehabilitation, "alternative sentences," and the extremely general solutions of fairness, equality, education and "community corrections." Most critics of mass incarceration focus on the process, not the substance of the problems. The process is flawed, they say, because of the failed War on Drugs, inadequate indigent defense, excessive prosecutorial power, mandatory sentences, exce...