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Whither the Webb reform bill ... does it weather or wither?

By Douglas A. Berman

I just discovered this long piece from last week's Washington Post discussing Senator Jim Webb and his on-going efforts to engineer some effective criminal justice reforms.  The piece is headlined "Structuring Sentences: Jim Webb Puts His Writerly Skills to Work in a Modest Proposal: Reform The Nation's Prisons ? And Drug Laws," as these passages of the article prompts the question of this post's title: When he decided to propose a massive reexamination of U.S. prisons and criminal laws this past spring, he gave the usual floor speech. Whereas other senators may get confined to that usually empty chamber and its daytime C-SPAN audience, Webb went on from there to state his case by writing a Parade magazine cover story titled "Why We Must Fix Our Prisons," talking directly to its 30 million-plus Sunday readers...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on July 13, 2009 (boomark / email).