Questionable Committments

“No one wants to allow a child to be hurt, and laws that create mechanisms to “keep bad men away” are seductive because they make us feel safer – but that safety is an illusion that comes at a great …

It’s Not Just the Drug War

“The growing unpopularity of the War on Drugs and the number of bipartisan moves to, supposedly, roll back mass incarceration have led some leftists to believe that, finally, the prison-state is about to be cut down to size.

“Yet a …

A Moral Imperative: Release Aging and Long-Term Prisoners

“It was only for a moment, but on January 20, 2015, this country’s criminal punishment system got a general call for reform in President Obama’s state of the union address. With 5 percent of the world’s population and 25 percent …

New report: The high cost of incarceration

The Growth of Incarceration in the United States — a new report from the National Research Council —  argues that “the United States has gone far past the point where the numbers of people in prison can be justified by …

Parole boards want remorse, but what if you’re innocent?

photo credit: Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times
The case of Robert Hill, convicted of murder in 1988 on the eyewitness accounts of some high crackheads, brings the Catch-22 of parole to the fore. Thinking it would get him paroled, Hill …