You’ve got to give credit where it’s due, even when its due to the most criminally negligent (or just plain criminal) and corrupt Attorney General in decades. So here’s a tip of the hat from me to Eric Holder:
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is set to announce Monday that low-level, nonviolent drug offenders with no ties to gangs or large-scale drug organizations will no longer be charged with offenses that impose severe mandatory sentences.
The new Justice Department policy is part of a comprehensive prison reform package that Holder will reveal in a speech to the American Bar Association in San Francisco, according to senior department officials.
How does that save lives? By not putting decent, salvageable kids into the prison system, where they learn how to become career criminals. Assuming they live that long.
Besides, mandatory sentencing was always a bad idea. It sure seemed smart back in the ’80s, when we were still reeling from liberal judges letting hardened criminals off with a slap on the wrist from a damp Kleenex. But judges are supposed to judge, to use their judgement — not just act as automatons for politicians who have long since left office. If you don’t like how a judge is using his judgement, either vote them out (where applicable), or vote out the idiots who appointed them. That’s our duty as citizens, just as judges are supposed to have their duties when it comes to sentencing.
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