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Thursday, March 15, 2012

Can We Reform The Criminal Justice System?

Everyone loves to complain about the way things are, me included. We complain about the government and the economy, politics and politicians, those people (whoever they are) of screwing things up for the rest of us. But has anyone come up with an idea that would actually change things? There was Prohibition and it's repeal. There was the Civil Rights movement. I think that changed some things. The EPA and the Clean Air Act have made a difference. I'm not sure how that happened. Did the hippies do that? The NRA is fighting an ongoing battle to restore our 2nd amendment rights and they seem to be making some progress.

I just read about a new idea. I don't know if it has a chance in hell of succeeding, but I think it is surely worth a shot. The idea is to crash the criminal justice system by getting everyone who gets arrested to refuse to make any plea agreement and to insist on going to trial. Read Go to Trial - Crash the Justice Sytem  in The New York Times.

While there certainly are violent criminals who should be locked up, I suspect more damage is done to non-violent offenders than can reasonably be justified.

Via Earth Bound Misfit.


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