Where's the (Criminal) Justice?

An issue conspicuously absent from the presidential campaign

Radley Balko | July 23, 2008

After 15 years of decline, the violent crime rate in America has in the past two years inched upward again, driven by spikes in midsized cities such as Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Minneapolis. This is occurring even as the U.S. continues to set new records in incarceration rates: One in 100 Americans is now behind bars or on parole. In recent years, DNA testing has shown that our criminal justice system is troublingly fallible. Some 218 people have been exonerated in recent years, and we’re discovering a new case of wrongful conviction every couple of weeks. The U.S. attorney scandal, the war on drugs and problems with how federal agents use confidential informants have all been in the news of late.

Yet criminal justice policy has thus far been conspicuously absent from the presidential campaign.

Read the rest of this article at The Politico.

Comments

Elemenope|7.23.08 @ 3:04PM|#

Criminal justice is the third rail of American politics.

As in: if you touch a just criminal system, you die.

The children and the victims and the victims that are children DEMAND INJUSTICE!!!

duster|7.23.08 @ 3:11PM|#

Why does Mr. Balko hate the children???

Invisible Finger|7.23.08 @ 3:16PM|#

There's a darn good reason criminal justice is being ignored - it's a huge moneymaker for government. Expect to see continued growth in the federal criminal code and exponential growth in provisions calling for asset forfeiture. We'll stop just short of sacrificing your first-born, but we'll get him/her with compulsory national service anyway.

ktc2|7.23.08 @ 3:20PM|#

LOL. Yeah, like they're going to talk about justice. Law and punishment today are completely divorced from justice. It might turn out a just result occasionally but it's just a fluke.

Colin|7.23.08 @ 3:26PM|#

Why the Justice League? No love for the Justice Society? :)

|7.23.08 @ 3:37PM|#

I couldn't agree with you more Radley. Trouble is, when it comes to criminal justice, everything the Pols want to do, only makes matters worse.

ktc2|7.23.08 @ 3:50PM|#

Good point Warren. We should be glad they're NOT talking about it.

All they would do is jack up the sentences for victimless crimes and generally make things a lot worse.

|7.23.08 @ 4:08PM|#

To be fair, Colin, the gal rocking the fishnets is the Black Canary, who was a JSA member before joining the JLA in the very ish whose Infantino/Anderson cover is depicted.

BC now even has her own Barbie!

Kevin

Episiarch|7.23.08 @ 4:23PM|#

Criminal justice doesn't affect the candidates or the reporters. Presidential powers, wars, etc. do. So they have their focus.

|7.23.08 @ 5:35PM|#

Don Siegelman for Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons

Colin|7.23.08 @ 9:20PM|#

Kevin,

What's funny, recently some chick on the NRO Corner was complaining about that Barbie, lamenting a culture that would allow such a thing. And then someone else posted that the Black Canary has been in comic books since 1947.

The Bearded Hobbit|7.23.08 @ 9:38PM|#

.. problem is, you have to ask questions where candidates have different views .. any of those questions asked of either of the two major candidates would get identical answers .. a hundred bux says that they wouldn't be the answers that anyone here wants to hear ..

.. Discouraged Hobbit

.. btw, keep up the good work, Radley .. always look forward to your articles (although they usually tend to depress me)

.. BH

Alan Vanneman|7.23.08 @ 11:29PM|#

Forget Radley's "Twenty questions Obama and McCain are afraid to answer." Where's the link to the comic? I want to see the chick in the fishnets who can kick the JLA's ass!

|7.24.08 @ 12:51AM|#

"Criminal justice doesn't affect the candidates or the reporters."

It damn sure affected John McCain's wife, who got a sweetheart deal for stealing Percocet and Vicodin from a charity.

On second thought, what affected Cindy McCain was far removed from justice.

|7.30.08 @ 7:00PM|#

Alan Vanneman writes:

Forget Radley's "Twenty questions Obama and McCain are afraid to answer." Where's the link to the comic? I want to see the chick in the fishnets who can kick the JLA's ass!

...nothing to get excited about. She's just wearing pantyhose, the usual sweatbags, not real stockings. Poorly drawn, at that.

However, here are a few far more interesting covers, not really SFW:

http://www.comicbox.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/dominatrix02-cover.jpg

http://www.linsner.com/images/covers/pinup_goddess_cover.jpg

http://i31.tinypic.com/kd0duc.jpg

By the way, if anyone meets the clown who invented pantyhose, hold them down until I get there, please. No need to be gentle. Crimes against humanity, and all that.