Criminal justice reform is a huge issue right now. We have a President willing to at least point out that our criminal justice system has some issues (to put it lightly). So I thought dkos might be a place to come to get some brainstorming help on a project of mine.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
I am working on a paper addressing criminal justice reform. The goal is to eventually generate specific and comprehensive reform proposals. The first section of this paper will address the 'problems' that exist in the system that we hope to address.
However, in creating a list of problems I realized that I would present a narrow view (mine). And even reaching out to other people in the field of criminal justice and other literature, there would be a built in perspective as to what the problems are.
So I was hoping to engage in a conversation with a few people here who are probably highly aware of a lot of the news around criminal justice issues (old and new), and who almost certainly have a different cultural and geographical perspective than my own. Help me out?
What kind of problems? Well some quick examples might be:
- too many people in jail
- too expensive
- racially biased consequences for crimes
- conviction of the not guilty
What I really want to do is break these problems down even further after they are presented, and I think this is where a larger conversation is most helpful. For example:
'Too many people in jail' could break down into the idea that too many 'non-violent' offenders are in jail. That could be further broken down that too many 'non-violent' crimes have serious jail time sentences.
Or perhaps 'too many people in jail' also breaks down into too many arrests for petty crimes or bail is set too high, etc.
Or, 'too many people in jail' is partially because recidivism rates are so high and people continually reoffend.
I'd also note that issues with criminal justice also exist from other ideological angles:
- not enough cops on the street
- jail sentences are not fully served with parole and probation
- sentences are too detached from the criminal activity
- too much money is spent on defending the guilty
- jails are physically dangerous
- law enforcement are asked to do too much
- defense attorneys and prosecutors are often ineffective and/or overworked
etc.
None of these examples are set in stone, or even ones I agree with, the idea is to create a list of problems and discuss them further, break them down, examine to what level this problem exists and then see if there is a method to address them.
If you're passionate about the issue, I'd love to hear from you here,