Report: Reducing U.S. prison population reduces crime

Here's yet another conservative myth busted [emphasis mine]:

The [Sentencing Project's] report points to New York, New Jersey and California as examples of how moving toward more lenient punishments for non-violent offenders is linked to lower rates of both violent crime and property crime. While the nation's state prison population shot up by 10 percent from 1999 to 2012 with violent and property crime dropping by 26 percent and 24 percent, respectively, New York and New Jersey each slashed their prison populations by 26 percent and saw crime drop a respective 31 percent and 30 percent during the same period.

"At least in three states we now know that the prison population can be reduced by about 25% with little or no adverse effect on public safety," The Sentencing Project's Marc Mauer and Nazgol Ghandnoosh wrote in their report. "Individual circumstances vary by state, but policymakers should explore the reforms in New York, New Jersey, and California as a guide for other states."

Locking Up Fewer People Doesn't Lead To Increased Crime, Report Says

By Lydia O'Connor

July 24, 2014 | Huffington Post

URL: http://huff.to/1AhblxG

'Safety valve' to avoid mandatory sentences

Finally!  Lawmakers should make laws and let judges judge; they should not hamstring or box-in judges. Our federal prisons are bulging with non-violent drug offenders because of stupid mandatory sentencing rules that make judges irrelevant in the process.

Today Rand Paul and Pat Leahy Introduced a Bill to Fix Our Atrocious Federal Mandatory Minimum Laws

By Mike Riggs

March 20, 2013 | Reason

URL: http://reason.com/blog/2013/03/20/rand-paul-and-pat-leahy-introduce-a-bill

Obama Admin. confirms that banksters are above the law

The banksters run the world. Even when they break the law, their TBTF banks are too "systemically important" to the financial system to prosecute them, even if it's for something as blatant as laundering drug money:

Nor have any individuals been charged at the five other big European banks that have also managed to dodge formal money-laundering charges in recent years, including British bank Standard Chartered, which entered its own deferred prosecution agreement on Monday. Apparently, all of this constant money laundering was done by robots.

"The message this is sending is if you want to engage in money laundering, make sure you're doing it within the context of your employment at a bank," [Notre Dame law professor Jimmy] Gurulé said in a phone interview. "And don't go small. Do it on a very large scale, and you won't get prosecuted."

By contrast, in 2010, the U.S. Congress took it upon itself to impose a mandatory sentence of 5 years in prison for possessing 28 grams of crack cocaine (that's down from 5 years for 5 grams in the 1980s).  So why isn't laundering billions of dollars of drug money or Iranian embargo money worth a mandatory sentence in prison?  Maybe I sound like an angry black man, but when you make these simple comparisons then you see who writes the laws, and for whom. The game is fixed.

UPDATE (12.14.2012): My man Matt Taibbi also made the obvious banksters-drug users comparison on prosecutions and mandatory sentencing on his Rolling Stone blog a day after I did.

Obama Administration Essentially Admits That Some Banks Are Too Big To Jail, Which Is Troubling

By Mark Gongloff

December 11, 2012

URL: http://huff.to/YXKOpr