Good luck.<p>Between easy fear-mongering ("Do you want criminals on the street?", "Representative Smith let that murder out, he could have prevented this", "Senator Bill is soft on crime!") and the huge number of jobs who depend on this nonsense (prisons, police, lawyers, bail bonds, half-way houses) I fear this will never be undone.
Leaving aside victimless crimes for now (drugs, gambling prostitution), one problem with US sentencing is that it doesn't scale linearly.<p>For instance, the sentence for petty larceny can be 6 months to a year. The penalty for 1st degree murder can be 30 years to life. I don't know anyone who would think Murder is merely 30 to 60 times worse than stealing underwear from Walmart.<p>I'm not one of those who thinks we should adopt Nordic style sentences. I.e. Anders Breivik should never see the light of day again in my opinion.<p>But sentences should be appropriate to the seriousness of what was done. Since the worst possible penalty is death/life in prison, which is ~30 to 60 years in most cases, lesser crimes such as theft or fraud should merit much smaller penalties. I.e. a day in jail, community service or payment of restitution.
at the federal level - drug offenses are about half of the population.<p>of course, it's one thing to talk about legalizing marijuana - but i'm not sure what i'm supposed to think about early release for a guy who was importing heroin into chicago, so that kids who can't afford reformulated oxycontin have a way to get high. it's all part of the same "non-violent drug offense" coin.<p>this is a pretty reflexive NYT column. once we get away from "non-violent drug offenders" i think the argument loses force. If you spend about 20 minutes reading about the details of the types of gnarly violent crimes the non-drug-related "mass incarcerated" commit, this sort of vague editorializing rings really hollow. people are capable of really heinous stuff.
Mass incarceration is big business. This is what happens you privatise something, its sole goal is to make money and guess what makes a private prison money? More inmates.<p>Then you have all of the other people/entities that benefit from a broken system; lawyers, police, judges, bail bonds. The justice system is inherently corrupt. And speaking of private prisons, most of them have occupancy guarantee clauses in their government contracts.<p>I think the problem is even bigger than the New York Times thinks it is. It'll take more than a NYT article to fix the problem.
There are two main external approaches that help improve outcomes for people affected by incarceration, top-down = Policy change & bottom-up = Grassroots.<p>It is first worth noting that change is generally hard for everyone: governments, organizations, and individuals, because it's not typically not a simple singular event but a complex process:
<a href="http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletters/Harvard_Womens_Health_Watch/2012/March/why-behavior-change-is-hard-and-why-you-should-keep-trying" rel="nofollow">http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletters/Harvard_Womens_Hea...</a><p>On the policy front, this is one of many approaches being taken, and this specific one is coming from the White House, My Brother's Keeper:
<a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/02/27/fact-sheet-opportunity-all-president-obama-launches-my-brother-s-keeper-" rel="nofollow">http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/02/27/fact-s...</a><p>On the grassroots front, there are two organization that come to mind that are running programs showing promise in breaking the cycle of crime at different points: Roca & the Center for Employment.<p>Here are their theories of change respectively:
<a href="http://rocainc.org/what-we-do/the-solution/rocas-intervention-model-for-high-risk-young-people/" rel="nofollow">http://rocainc.org/what-we-do/the-solution/rocas-interventio...</a>
<a href="http://ceoworks.org/about/what-we-do/ceo-model-3/" rel="nofollow">http://ceoworks.org/about/what-we-do/ceo-model-3/</a><p>Both are taking part in scaling what works with Social Impact Bonds:
<a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/toby_eccles_invest_in_social_change" rel="nofollow">http://www.ted.com/talks/toby_eccles_invest_in_social_change</a>
<a href="http://www.socialfinanceus.org/what-we-do/select-current-engagements/social-finance-drives-landmark-new-york-state-deal" rel="nofollow">http://www.socialfinanceus.org/what-we-do/select-current-eng...</a>
<a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/02/tackling-mass-incarceration/?smid=pl-share" rel="nofollow">http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/02/tackling-mas...</a><p>Additional case studies from David Hunter:
<a href="http://dekhconsulting.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/HunterConsulting_ROCA_CaseStudy.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://dekhconsulting.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/HunterC...</a>
<a href="http://dekhconsulting.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/CenterForEmploymentOpp_CaseStudy.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://dekhconsulting.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/CenterF...</a>
<i>even when there is no evidence that imprisoning more people has reduced crime by more than a small amount.</i><p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Violent_crime_rates_by_gender_1973-2003.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Violent_crime_rates_by_gen...</a><p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Property_Crime_Rates_in_the_United_States.svg" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Property_Crime_Rates_in_th...</a><p>The ny times editorial board is either living in a dream world, or is willfully lying and actually wants a return to the levels of property and violent crime from 40 years ago.