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Feb. 8, 2013

Rabbi Berel Wein: Lofty ideals must be followed with grounded applications

Clifford D. May: Letter from the West Bank
Steve Rothaus: Judge OKs plan for gay man, lesbian couple to be on girl's birth certificate
Gloria Goodale: States consider drone bans: Overreaction or crucial for privacy rights?
Environmental Nutrition Editors: Don't buy the aloe vera juice hype
Michael Craig Miller, M.D.: Harvard Experts: Regular exercise pumps up memory, too
Erik Lacitis: Vanity plates: Some take too much license
The Kosher Gourmet by Susie Middleton: Broccoflower, Carrot and Leek Ragout with Thyme, Orange and Tapenade is a delightful and satisfying melange of veggies, herbs and aromatics
Feb. 6, 2013

Nara Schoenberg: The other in-law problem

Frank J. Gaffney Jr. : A see-no-jihadist for the CIA
Kristen Chick: Ahmadinejad visits Cairo: How sect tempers Islamist ties between Egypt, Iran
Roger Simon: Ed Koch's lucky corner
Heron Marquez Estrada: Robot-building sports on a roll
Patrick G. Dean, M.D.: Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: How to restore body's ability to secrete insulin
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: 3 prostate-protecting diet tips
The Kosher Gourmet by Emma Christensen 7 principles for to help you make the best soup ever in a slow cooker
Feb. 4, 2013

Jonathan Tobin: Can Jewish Groups Speak Out on Hagel?

David Wren: Findings of government study, released 3 days before Newtown shooting, at odds with gun-control crusaders
Kristen Chick: Tahrir becomes terrifying, tainted
Curtis Tate and Greg Gordon: US keeps building new highways while letting old ones crumble
David G. Savage: Supreme Court to hear case on arrests, DNA
Harvard Health Letters: Neck and shoulder pain? Know what it means and what to do
Andrea N. Giancoli, M.P.H., R.D.: Eat your way to preventing age-related muscle loss
The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington Baked Pears in Red Wine and Port Wine Glaze: A festive winter dessert
Feb. 1, 2013

Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh Weinreb: Redemption

Clifford D. May Home, bloody, home
Christa Case Bryant andNicholas Blanford Why despite Syria's allies warning of retaliation for Israeli airstrikes, the threats are likely hollow
Rick Armon, Ed Meyer and Phil Trexler Ex-police captain cleared by DNA test is freed after nearly 15 years
Harvard Health Letters: Could it by your thyroid?
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: When 'healthy food' isn't
Sue Zeidler: Coke ad racist? Arab-American groups want to yank Super Bowl ad (INCLUDES VIDEO)
The Kosher Gourmet by Nealey Dozier The secret of this soup is the garnish
January 30, 2013

Allan Chernoff: Celebrating 'Back from the Dead Day'

America isn't a religious country? Don't tell Superbowl fans!
Mark Clayton Cybercrime takedown!
Germany remembers Hitler rise to power
Israel salutes U. N. --- with the one finger salute
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: Get cookin' with heart-healthy fats
Ballot riles Guinness World Records
The Kosher Gourmet by Elizabeth Passarella Potato, Squash and Goat Cheese Gratin
January 28, 2013

Nancy Youssef: And Democracy for all? Two years on, Egypt remains in state of chaos

Fred Weir: Putin: West is fomenting jihadi 'blowback'
Meredith Cohn: Implantable pain disk may help those with cancer
Michael Craig Miller, M.D. : Ask the Harvard Experts: Are there drugs to help control binge eating?
David Ovalle Use of controversial 'brain mapping' technology stymied
Jane Stancill: Professor's logic class has 180,000 friends
David Clark Scott Lego Racism?
The Kosher Gourmet by Mario Batali The celebrated chef introduces us to PANZEROTTI PUGLIESI, cheese-stuffed pastry from Italy's south


Jewish World Review May 30, 2012/ 9 Sivan, 5772

Writing a book? Beats prison

By Jay Ambrose


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | America is sticking people in prison like it's a frivolous contest when instead the numbers add up to a great cruelty that achieves minimal good.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina used a better means to arrive at a better end, sentencing a white-collar criminal to 75,000 words worth of writing. I think it was the kind of call other judges should make.

A May 15 Wall Street Journal story tells what happened. Andrew Bodnar, an executive at Bristol-Myers Squibb, pleaded guilty to giving phony information to regulators. On top of a $5,000 fine, the judge said he must spend two years of unsupervised probation while he composed a now-completed, 253-page book showing others how they might avoid similar conduct.

Sounds weird, maybe, but to my mind, that's a much better, more sensible sentence than it would have been to toss him in a federal prison at a taxpayer expense of something more than $22,000 a year. Cost is one of the issues in a country that beats all others in incarceration rates. We spend an estimated $75 billion a year on federal, state and local incarceration, hitting taxpayers hard while taking money from other purposes, such as education. But the true evil is the cruelty.

In a Jan. 30 New Yorker article, Adam Gopnik writes powerfully of the prison experience as being one of "attenuated panic, of watchful paranoia -- anxiety and boredom and fear mixed into a kind of enveloping fog." Prisoners, he wrote, see "time as something being done to you, instead of something you do things with." During my one visit to a prison, the punishment struck me as torture without cessation, much worse than some searing, momentary pain. And yet we imprison madly and gladly.

"Mass incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history is a fundamental fact of our country today -- perhaps the fundamental fact, as slavery was the fundamental fact of 1850," Gopnik writes. "In truth, there are more black men in the grip of the criminal-justice system -- in prison, on probation, or on parole -- than were in slavery then. Over all, there are now more people under correctional supervision in America -- more than 6 million -- than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height."

The facts all by themselves say a lot, as in a July 2011 Reason magazine article reporting that there were 1,524,513 prisoners as of 2009, up to 2,284,913 when local jails are thrown in. Our incarceration rate of 743 per 100,000 is the world's highest, with 217 in Poland, 96 in France and 32 in India. From 1880 to 1970, the magazine said, we ourselves kept rates at something between 100 and 200 per 100,000.

The main excuse for where are now -- that this excess was necessitated by excessive crime -- is undone by studies, not least of all one by a Berkeley law professor, Franklin Zimring. He showed how New York City dramatically reduced its street crime rate between 1990 and 2010 through police strategies, a key one being to concentrate cops where crime was concentrated.

The city did not send more people to prison like much of the rest of the country, which turned to incarceration as rescue from a crime rise now gone, and guess what: New York reduced crime much more than any other city.

While Reason magazine reports findings that longer sentences for more convictions did account for 25 percent of the national drop in violent crime, we know that prisons provide an education in crime that too many released convicts put to use. They can't find jobs, they cheat and steal, they go back to prison.

Let's fight crime the New York way and also extend judicial discretion to locating more and more Bodnar-style, crime-deterring but productive, non-expensive means of dealing with non-violent criminals as possible. Let's let those convicted of crime contribute to the rest of us without us contributing to their upkeep.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

Comment by clicking here.

Jay Ambrose, formerly Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers and the editor of dailies in El Paso, Texas, and Denver, is a columnist living in Colorado.


Previously:


05/23/12: Student loans fail students
05/21/12: Europeanizing America into crisis
05/16/12: Obama a bully, too
05/15/12: Walker recall vote could swing national pension policy
05/07/12: Bumbling, fumbling, benighted, old Washington near tipping point where freedom is done for
05/02/12: The Communists cannot be happy
04/30/12: There's no objective truth, least of all concerning behavior
04/25/12: Forgive the extremist?
04/23/12: Educational excellence is a game
04/18/12: Obama's interventions help a few by the most autocratic, complicated, ineffective means possible, yet hurt many more
04/16/12: Overregulation strikes again: The nanny state threatens to turn us into children
04/11/12: Obama is not bonkers
04/04/12: Will America vote against authoritarianism?
04/02/12: 'Tipping point' on federal restraint approaches
03/28/12: Obama truth from an open mike
03/21/12: The progressive campaign for voter fraud
03/19/12: Public pensions will get us if we don't watch out
03/14/12: Politics needs reporting, not speculation
03/12/12: Home of the free, the brave, the endangered
03/07/12: Obama used Limbaugh as scapegoat
03/05/12: Campaign substance lost in media melodrama
03/01/12: When Big Brother drowns
02/24/12: Obama goes gaseous on gas
02/22/12: Political tears for trust in personal empowerment --- except in the bedroom
02/17/12: Of cut-off ears and silenced mouths
02/15/12: Obama is a joke whose antics aren't funny
02/10/12: An energy boom looms, despite Obama
02/08/12: Obama's assault on faith
02/03/12: Can Romney get serious?
01/27/12: Obama is like an Italian ship captain
01/25/12: Newt Gingrich's first 100 days
01/20/12: Obama's Keystone pipeline lies
01/18/12: Critics worse than urinating Marines
01/13/12: Ron Paul is a cartoonish character
01/11/12: Newt Gingrich upset by Mitt Romney's brilliance
01/09/12: How about regulating presidents, too?
01/04/12: How America smothers itself
12/30/11: A tax break that helps break the nation
12/28/11: Watch out for the banana peel, Newt
12/21/11: A tale of two men
12/16/11: Strange happenings in Russia
12/14/11: Tim Tebow is a man of character
12/09/11: A populist, envy-mongering fraud divisively exacerbating resentment among different groups of Americans
12/07/11: Tax games threaten nation
12/05/11: Why Wal-Mart serves us better than Barney Frank
11/30/11: Not writing off Newt
11/28/11: Answers to the Iranian threat
11/23/11: Failure of the incumbency investment
11/18/11: Occupiers: Chop off their heads!
11/16/11: Obama asks jobless to sacrifice
11/09/11: Michael Moore's insufferable occupation
11/04/11: Political tipping point is coming
11/02/11: Idealogues versus 7 billion
10/28/11: Obama games on student loans
10/26/11: Wit and quick moves v. humanity and thoroughgoing honesty? It's no contest —- or at least shouldn't be
10/07/11: Baptists, bootleggers and Wall Street protesters
10/05/11: Federal law will get you even if you watch out
09/28/11: Leftist bugbears on the march
09/23/11: Still hope for coal to help us
09/21/11: Obama's Madoff ploy
09/19/11: U.S. can't afford to wait until it happens
09/14/11: Defending -- and strengthening -- gung ho collectivism
09/12/11: A pipeline to better times
09/08/11: Obama just keeps destroying jobs
09/06/11: Ultra-feminists thwarting justice
08/31/11: Corporations are people? Yes, Count the ways
08/26/11: What an earthquake tells us about debt
08/25/11: The tyranny of scientific consensus
08/23/11: Fracking hardly a public health threat
08/17/11: Why Obamacare won't control births
08/15/11: Balanced budget amendment unbalanced idea
08/10/11: Kerry's war on citizen speech
08/05/11: Upside to the compromise leaving the door open for obnoxious maneuvers
08/03/11: The people who may save America
07/29/11: On making deals, Obama is no LBJ
07/27/11: The threat behind the debt
07/23/11: Mean opposition to means-testing
07/20/11: Leftist babble makes debt crisis even worse
07/18/11: Time to raise demagoguery ceiling
07/13/11: Obama treating treaties badly
07/08/11: Is decline of U.S. exaggerated?
07/05/11: Not math deficiency, but demagoguery



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