Robert X. Cringely writes a very powerful article about an important study that shows the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, which dramatically increased federal prison sentences, don't deter crime. Before the guidelines were enacted, the Government commissioned a study. DOJ didn't like the results. They didn't pay the authors, who later lost their business. One of the study's authors later committed suicide. The other became a law professor and original member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission.

Why should we care?

...we should care because I'm told the Block and Nold study, which was intended to economically validate the proposed sentencing guidelines, instead showed that the new guidelines would actually create more crime than they would deter. More crime, more drug use, more robbery, more murder would be the result, not less. Not only that, but these guidelines would lead to entire segments of the population entering a downward economic spiral, taking away their American dream.

There is no mention anywhere of this study, which was completely buried by the DoJ under then-secretary Edwin Meese. The proposed sentencing guidelines were accepted unaltered and the world we have today is the result. We spend tens of billions per year on prisons to house people who don't contribute in any way to our economy. We tear apart the black and latino communities. The cost to society is immense, and as Block and Nold showed, unnecessary. AND THE FEDS KNEW THIS AT THE TIME.

There's lots more, go read the whole thing.