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"The Tip of the Punishment Iceberg"

View the article here 01/27/2009 By Matt Kelley Does the public?s focus on high-profile crimes, the death penalty and DNA exonerations overshadow the bigger problems in our criminal justice system? Doug Berman, whose excellent blog Sentencing Law & Policy I link to often, says the punishment problem in our country is obscured by sensational crime headlines and even occasional good news like wrongful convictions being overturned. Photo-ops and news stories often become the catalyst for specific, targeted policy reform, Berman says, and that leads us to forget about the vast expansion of our prison system and the damage caused by our addiction to punishment. "In the criminal justice system those kind of anecdotes tend to skew a broader picture of what needs to be of persistent concern in the work of legal reformers and policy reformers," Berman said in an interview last week on Berkeley's KPFA radio...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sex Offender Issues on January 27, 2009 (boomark / email).