Used to be, back in the dim past, say the 1960's, judges had broad discretion in sentencing. Some judges abused this discretion and let perps off with a slap on the wrist when the community thought the death penalty was warrented. So over the last 50 years, legislatures have tightened things up with mandatory sentencing guideline laws, which called for very tough sentencing indeed. The result, the US has more people in jail than every other place on earth. And more prisons, and more unionized prison guards.
We ought to do something about this. We could start with pot. We should not be incarcerating people for mere possession of pot. Although pot isn't good for you, it's no worse than tobacco which is legal in every state of the union. Up here most adults view pot as a charge of convenience which the cops use to hassle teenagers.
Then we ought to remove lying to the cops or the FBI as felonies. If they want to get you, all they have to do is keep on grilling you, and sooner or later you will say something that does not check out. Bingo, felony charge. Far as I am concerned, it's up to the cops to get evidence of a real crime, not to cross up the suspect with repeated trick questions.
And conspiracy. That's a vague lawyer's word for hanging out with criminals. Let's eliminate conspiracy as a crime. If the perp was doing a crime, fine bag 'em. But if all you have is that the perp hung out with bad guys, tough, it's a free country.
And I bet if a bunch of fair minded citizens reviewed all the felonies now on the books, they could recommend dropping half of them.
No comments:
Post a Comment