Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Criminal Justice thoughts

2 comments:

  1. What would you think of a federal grant program for drug courts?

    ReplyDelete
  2. A few problems. Big sitting duck for a federalism debate; near as I can tell, it's entirely a state-level program, which is the perfect storm for people who are good on federalism. On top of that, I've seen one or two troubling writings about the dark side of drug courts, about how much abuse of discretion happens when a bad judge gets ahold of that bench and those streamlined procedures. I could see some hard to beat solvency turns coming out of them. Finally, is handing out grants for a state-level approach really a substantial reform of the criminal justice system? I gather that topicality's handled differently in your league from how it works in others, but I'd be itching for that topicality debate. I think there are better options out there.

    ReplyDelete