Dead Souls

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, nowhere with more caprice than with the criminal justice system. On the plus side, there are at least a couple of good trends: a tilt from the death penalty (with serious qualifications about the "living death" alternative I discussed two weeks ago) and a move away from imprisonment for victimless crimes--as evidenced by medical marijuana laws; impending reform of the Rockefeller drug laws; and Prop 36 in California, offering treatment alternatives to prison.

On the minus side, there are some grim developments. For violent felons, sentencing laws have been getting steadily worse. There have been big increases in sentencing enhancements (time added to your "base sentence" for using a gun, having prior felony convictions, gang-related nature of the crime, hate crimes, etc.). Some of these enhancements are new; others have been around for a long time but have gotten much more punitive. (There was a heartening victory in California in November with the defeat of Prop 6, which would have increased penalties for gang-related crimes.)

Other bad trends include the growing use of solitary confinement units, the tendency to try juveniles as adults and, of course, the post-9/11 general loss of civil liberties, thanks to the ever more conservative federal judiciary. This is not to forget the vindictive sex-offender laws that have been passed in the last few years.

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