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Sunday Crime Stuff

The whole world doesn't revolve around prosecutors. Other good things to read today:

  • Say hello to Prison Legal News, gathering injustice stories from all across the country.
  • Republican maybe-candidate Fred Thompson writes there are too many federal crimes and criticizes the expanding prison population, but as Ilya at Volokh notes, he ignores the elephant in the room, the war on drugs.

    However, there is a major elephant in this federalism room that Thompson doesn't mention. He is right to note the massive growth in the federal prison population over the last 20 years, but fails to point out that most of that growth is due to the War on Drugs.

  • Don't miss the brief by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (pdf)filed in the Kimbrough case on crack cocaine penalties. It focuses on the racial impact of crack sentencing and how the disparity affects not only defendants but families and the community and undermines respect for law. [Hat tip to Peter Goldberger.]

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  • Display: Sort:
    Jeralyn, thanx u for the (none / 0) (#1)
    by Electa on Sun Jul 29, 2007 at 05:46:26 PM EST
    for the link to Prison Legal News.  Finally there's confirmation that corporate giants such as ATT are outsourcing telemarketing services, laying off union workers for prison slave labor

    Not only is the middle class competing w/China, India, Mexico, etc. for jobs but Prisoners as well.  Eventually there won't be a need to outsource to foreign countries we'll have enough people in prison to supply all the labor pools.  Now that there're more white collar prosecutions carrying longterm sentences, what the hell, Nacchio could be running a major corp. from his prison cube @ 2$ day.  I'm sure stockholders wouldn't have a problem with that.    

    I don't know what (none / 0) (#2)
    by Electa on Sun Jul 29, 2007 at 05:47:51 PM EST
    I'm doing wrong but here's the link


    Parent
    FU Thompson (none / 0) (#3)
    by Semanticleo on Sun Jul 29, 2007 at 06:23:11 PM EST
    The elephantine Thompson would do well look at the
    lobbying power of the prison guards, whose overtime and pay scale is dependent upon keeping the user
    and small dealer incarcerated.

    Not to mention the asset disgorging that supplements the budget of DEA, who naturally, get more aggressive in Medical Marijuana States (especially San Francisco and Hollywood clinics) when the SCOTUS
    majority (Bong Hits for Jesus) makes decisions
    based upon their moral imperatives vs.  the Law.