[jbrackett]

My interpretation is that they trying to make the point that it's not just the "War on Drugs" that is causing this massive spike in prison population but is instead being driven by increasing penalties across the board, including increasing the number serving life, stated or otherwise, without possibility of parole.

They make this point while acknowledging that the "War on Drugs" does disproportionately affect African Americans and women.

Throughout the article they make several statements that indicate to me they think there should be more discretion allowed on deciding which punitive actions should be taken.

[cnnsucks]

> more discretion

Discretion is a big part of how we ended up with "three strikes" and mandatory minimums. People have not forgotten the outrageous abuses of discretion that were common in the '70s and '80s; activist judges abusing their discretion are not a figment of the right wing knuckle dragger imagination and it was routine for some judge to create a headline with lenient sentences that offended all sensibility.

The problem extends to prosecutorial discretion as well; this [1] sort of headline from this past Wednesday -- again illustrating the failure of the justice system and reinforcing our current state of affairs -- is still very common and does not escape notice, no matter how much you might wish it would. Then you have the abuses we see on the national stage regarding "prosecutorial discretion" in immigration policy, selective prosecution of violations of classified information handling we've seen recently, and many, many others.

It only takes a few activist judges or prosecutors to polarize an electorate. Right or wrong that's the actual world we live in and ignoring that reality won't ever work.

[1] http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/drunk-driving/thirteen-t...

[jacobush]

My take-away is that not only has some discretion been dis-allowed, but that some discretion is still allowed but stays unused, for some reason. Tough-on-crime and all that.