archive

The American police state

Michael Tonry (Minnesota): Sentencing in America, 1975-2025. Melissa Hamilton (Houston): McSentencing: Mass Federal Sentencing and the Law of Unintended Consequences. Craig S. Lerner (George Mason): Life Without Parole as a Conflicted Punishment. Alexander Volokh (Emory): Prison Accountability and Performance Measures. Harry Levine on the scandal of racist marijuana arrests and what to do about it. Lauren Kirchner on mapping (and potentially preventing) crime with math. As federal prison population spiked 790 percent: Prison overcrowding is projected to get even worse in the coming years — the one single fix that could stem the trend is reform to mandatory minimum sentences, a new study finds. Haunting new pictures of women in prison: Oklahoma has the world's highest incarceration rate for women — Yousef Khanfar traveled there and took these pictures of them. Why are prison riots declining while prison populations explode? Joseph Bernstein visits the corrections officers’ annual Mock Prison Riot. The American Police State: Sociologist Alice Goffman interrogates the criminal-justice system, and tries to stay out of the spotlight. Congress is poised to bury “tough-on-crime” — Obama should hang back and let them work. Al From and Jose Cerda on why American politicians don't talk about crime anymore. Christian Lorentzen reviews Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson by Jeff Guinn.