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"Bold new idea: Make punishment fit the crime"

By Douglas A. Berman

The title of this post is the title of this op-ed appearing in the the Seattle Post Intelligencer.  Here is the start of a potent piece:The U.S. Sentencing Commission sets the parameters federal judges are obliged to follow in sentencing convicted felons. It has long been, in effect, the hanging judge of the federal criminal justice system, backing long, inflexible sentences and making judicial discretion an oxymoron. But, surprise, last year the commission defied the Bush administration by reducing crack-cocaine sentences to reflect those for powder cocaine, easing a disparity that was a major source of the wildly disproportionate incarceration of African-Americans.  What's more, it boldly applied the new standard retroactively.  And now the commission is studying possible sentencing alternatives to imprisonment, a move toward making recommendations to Congress...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on October 17, 2008 (boomark / email).