mass incarceration
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On prosecution.
Prosecutors can wield their tough reputations to push problems elsewhere … but that’s not the same as fixing them.
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On race and our criminal justice system.
In our nation’s criminal justice system, we ignore most of who people are… and focus only on the parts of them we fear.
AI, blow and go, broken communities, Child Beater, education, emotional trauma, going without medication, jail, jail medical care, jail poetry, Marfan syndrome, mass incarceration, medical care in jail, Norman Dubie, persona poetry, poetry, poverty, prison, prison poetry, probation, prosecutorial discretion, racial injustice, rehabilitation, Safe Passage, sentencing inequality, teaching, teaching in jail -
On the Tower of Babel and beneficial curses.
Kind-hearted citizens of the United States needed to be saved from our own complacency.
45, Abdelfattah Kilito, attorney general, Avigdor Shinan, Babel, Babylon, Benjamin Lee Whorf, Bible, climate change, climate destabilization, complacency, congress, cooperation, Cugel the Clever, curse, democrat, Democratic Party, diversity, Donald Trump, education, Elif Batuman, English, Eyes of the Overworld, From Gods to God, Gate of the Gods, Gateway to Heaven, global warming, God, God’s Gate, health care, health care reform, Heisenberg, Ismael, Jack Vance, language, linguistics, mass incarceration, monoculture, Old Testament, personal responbility, perspective, politics, PotUS, President, Quran, republican, Robyn Creswell, sentencing reform, tax code, tax cut, Thai, The Idiot, The Tongue of Adam, tongue, Tower of Babel, Trump, Turkish, uncertainty principle, Valerie Zakovitch, Whorf hypothesis, Yahweh, Yair Zakovitch -
On government intrusion and addiction.
To beat the opiate epidemic, we need strong communities. But prosecutors’ reliance on police informants destroys communities.
AA, addiction, Akhil Reed Amar, ants on the melon, Bill of Rights, constitution, Cor Urbis, creative writing, Daniel Dennett, death before dishonor, economics, emotion, evolution of emotion, exclusionary rule, FBI, Fourth Amendment, freedom of religion, game theory, Homo economicus, human evolution, jailhouse tattoos, Jeremy Waldron, mandatory minimums, mass incarceration, mosque, NA, opiate epidemic, poetry, poetry in jail, police, police informants, policing, prison, prisoners’ dilemma, privacy, protection, rats, recovery, repeated prisoners’ dilemma, rights, search, signaling, snooping, teaching writing in jail, tip, Virginia Adair, War on Drugs -
On driving.
If you know you’re safe from the police, why not zip along? Get where you’re going faster! But these small choices feed injustice.
america’s original sin, Bill of Rights, Black Lives Matter, Car Wars, City of Los Angeles v. Lyons, Civil forfeiture, constitutional law, cops, David Harris, Douglas Husak, driving, ESPN First Take, First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, Fourth Amendment’s Death on the Highway, illegal stops, impeding traffic, Indiana Prisoners’ Writing Workshop, injustice, institutional racism, jim wallis, Justice Marshall, Justice Sotomayor, marijuana, Mark Schlereth, mass incarceration, Michelle Alexander, Midwest Pages to Prisoners Project, minority rights, overcriminalization, Pages to Prisoners, paraphernalia, police, policing, quintet of hate machines, racial injustice, racism, Rikers, Second Amendment, segregation, solitary confinement, speed limits, Stephen A. Smith, Strieff dissent, Supreme Court, The Bail Trap, The New Jim Crow, transporting alcohol, Tyrone Tomlin, unreasonable search and seizure, Utah v. Strieff, war on cops, War on Drugs, white privilege, Whren v. United States -
On preventing future crime.
Mass incarceration hurts all of us, even if we don’t know anyone locked away. It may have cost my mother-in-law her life.
A Visit from an Outsider, C. J. Chivers, Cathy O’Neil, jail, James Trent, Jason Chambers, judicial discretion, Leviathan, Lori Milks, mass incarceration, Michael Mueller-Smith, New Yorker, prison, prosecutorial discretion, PTSD, randomized study, recidivism, rehabilitation, Sam Siatta, Selma, sentencing reform, state violence, The Fighter, Thomas Hobbes, Weapons of Math Destruction -
On fairness (and how we treat the utility monster).
How do you measure someone’s capacity for joy? And what does that say about our opiate epidemic?
animal welfare, Betham, competetive equilibrium, distribution of resources, distribution of wealth, economics, equality, evolution, fairness, heroin, heroin epidemic, human evolution, mass incarceration, Milton Friedman, moral philosophy, natural selection, negative externalities, opiate abuse, opiate epidemic, opportunity, Pareto optimal, Pareto optimality, political philosophy, survival of the fittest, tax policy, utilitarian, utilitarianism, utility monster, utility theory, War on Drugs









