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Should sentencing fans be excited about voters "throwing the bums out" of DC?

By Douglas A. Berman

The results of yesterday's various elections can and will be spun in many ways, though the essential anti-incumbent reality has to be part of any spin. And, given what I view as the extremely poor modern sentencing records of all the Congresses run by all the old guys inside the Beltway over the last 20+ years, my spin on yesterday's work of democracy is simply "Yea!". Conventional wisdom in DC has long been that even a single legislative vote that seemed "soft on crime" in any way was a primary way (and perhaps the only way) that an incumbent could seriously risk re-election prospects. For this reason, for the last two decades, nearly everyone inside the Beltway (save Senator Jim Webb and a few rare others) has largely avoided any and all serious and frank discussion of the expensive failures of the drug war or of the modern social and economic consequences of mass incarceration...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on May 19, 2010 (boomark / email).