Make the counties pay for the cost of sending their offenders to (state) prison and you'd see this "overconsumption" of an expensive resource self correct.
People should also know that people go to jail for years for 1 failed drug test in rural communities. Happens everyday, just not on our radar.
Perhaps all prosecutors and public defender would be chosen randomly from a pool, instead of making prosecutors a political office?
The whole f*ing USA sends more people to jail than any other normal country in the world.
It sounds like the article is suggesting defenses under the equal protections clause in the Constitution.
Does anyone know of cases where it's been applied in this way? It seems like this would be a new way of showing bias, and possibly reducing harsh prison sentences.
I find it worse that San Francisco would possibly give 0 years to someone dealing heroin.
So the new face of mass incarceration is white rural conservatives, the same demographic that is largely responsible for the "tough on crime" push that led to disproportionate incarceration of poor people of color. Now that their fortunes are shifting, I wonder if the rural white conservatives will still be so gung-ho for harsh criminal penalties.
It's interesting how the exact same facts can be described in so many different ways, in order to imply vastly different conclusions.
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"This small Indiana county sends more people to prison than San Francisco"
Implication - the county's law & order apparatus is dysfunctional and is oppressing the local population
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"This small Indiana county has more convicted drug dealers than San Francisco"
Implication - the county has a severe drug problem, and harsh efforts are needed to combat this problem
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"This small Indiana county catches more hard-drug-dealers than San Francisco"
Implication - either other counties are incompetent/indifferent in combating the selling of hardcore drugs, or this county is exceptionally good at achieving this goal.
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"This small Indiana county leads in the nation in narrowing the racial-incarceration-gap"
Implication - the county's law & order system is tough but fair, and should be a role model for others in pursuing White criminals just as vigorously as Minority criminals.
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The phrasing involved in "sending more people to prison" in particular, sweeps under the rug the fact that the people being sent to prison are dealing hard drugs, and spawning/enabling a generation of drug addicts whose lives are going to fall apart as a result. Instead of making the drug dealers the lead actors who initiated the subsequent chain of events, the headline is structured such that the county's justice system is portrayed as the lead actor instead. Neither wording is wrong, but they clearly bias the audience in different directions.
I trust the NYTimes more than any other American media source, but it's hard to deny that they too have their own spin that focuses more on one side of the story, more so than others.