Category Archives: Views & News

Well, whaddya know? Prison reform

Senators seek overhaul of US prison system

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Calling the US criminal justice system “a national disgrace,” US Senators urged for a top-to-bottom review with an eye on reforms aimed at reducing America’s massive prison population.

Democratic Senator Jim Webb, backed by Republican Senator Arlen Specter, introduced legislation to create a blue-ribbon panel that would conduct an 18-month assessment and offer concrete recommendations for reform.

“America’s criminal justice system has deteriorated to the point that it is a national disgrace,” Webb said, noting that the United States has five percent of the world’s population but 25 percent of the world’s prisoners.

The Virginia lawmaker noted soaring numbers of drug offenders in prison, and charged that four times more mentally ill people are incarcerated than housed in mental health hospitals.

Read the rest of this story here.

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On another note, does the above link mean that Google is PAYING for news content? Hmmm… we must investigate…

New federal gang prevention laws

The name keeps changing… from the Youth Promise Act of 2007 to the PRECAUTION Act of 2009 (Prevention Resources for Eliminating Criminal Activity Using Tailored Interventions in Our Neighborhoods Act of 2009)

Phew, what a mouthful!

Anyway, for those who care to follow this legislation, it was recently re-introduced as H.R.  1064. The Senate version is S. 435.

Track them both (and any other federal bills) at this awesome site:  OpenCongress.org.

The description from the Senate bill is:

A bill to provide for evidence-based and promising practices related to juvenile delinquency and criminal street gang activity prevention and intervention to help build individual, family, and community strength and resiliency to ensure that youth lead productive, safe, health, gang-free, and law-abiding lives.

As always, read the fine print. Just as with other “gang prevention” legislation in the past, the devil is in the details.

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What’s really happening with newspapers

Well, I am a reporter, so like everyone else, I’m following the shrinkage of newspapers with great interest. This essay by Clay Shirky is making the rounds, and says it all (almost):

Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable

A few quotes that resonate:

  • “You’re gonna miss us when we’re gone!” has never been much of a business model.
  • Now is the time for experiments, lots and lots of experiments, each of which will seem as minor at launch as craigslist did, as Wikipedia did, as octavo volumes did.
  • Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. For a century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable. That’s been a fine accident to have, but when that accident stops, as it is stopping before our eyes, we’re going to need lots of other ways to strengthen journalism instead.
  • When we shift our attention from ’save newspapers’ to ’save society’, the imperative changes from ‘preserve the current institutions’ to ‘do whatever works.’

As a long-time Internet geek who’s also a long-time reporter, I found this essay reassured me about journalism in ways most ‘Net fanatics haven’t been able to (As in, no, citizen journalism is not going to save us).