Race, Class, and Incarceration

The NY Review's David Cole asks, "Can our shameful prisons be reformed?"

L.A. Times defends Huckabee, executive clemency

An L.A. Times editorial defends Mike Huckabee's 2000 decision to commute the sentence of Maurice Clemmons, noting that governors should be more open to considering executive clemency, not less.

P-I: State cuts to criminal supervision 'are a tragedy waiting to happen'

A good Seattle P-I piece convincingly suggests that cutting community corrections budget to achieve cost savings may be penny-wise but pound-foolish.

Footnotes re Recent Violence

Everyone is profoundly saddened by the murder of four Lakewood PD officers this weekend, as well as the slaying of SPD officer Timothy Brenton on 10.31.09.

Amidst the grief and chatter, however, a few important points may have been missed. While Mike Huckabee is being vilified for granting clemency to Clemmons, one hears little discussion of how mental illness is a factor in the criminal justice system.

Likewise,how many questions have been raised about how the alleged shooters obtained their guns? Absent indications otherwise in the case of Monfort (details are still too sketchy w/Clemmons), it appears that it was perfectly legal for him to assemble a small arsenal in his apartment.

Calls will doubtless be raised for "tougher" policies on crime. Will anyone ask about the wisdom of our gun laws? Or how about the utility of channeling the mentally ill and chemically dependent through the undiscriminating funnel of the crimninal justice system?

Good news for demagouges, bad news for the rest of us

Crime and Politics. This speaks for itself.

One can only hope that such madness does not engender more....