Always need to remember: the Portuguese law everyone praises is EXACTLY the law from 1920s Prohibition the same ppl decry.

Sale, manuf, and transport still illegal. Just possession oaky.

That’s the Volstead Act.

It’s not abt the law. It’s abt the enforcement culture.
I’m always sort of bemused by how ppl praise the Portuguese law, given what it actually says.

Also, Portugal passes three things at once: possession law, universal basic income, big treatment expansion.

It wasn’t just “less punishment.” It was also “more services.”
Also, important to note the cultural differences. As @KeithNHumphreys always points out, PRE reform Portugal didn’t have a lot of ppl in for trafficking, so the underlying enforcement culture differed a lot... and bet that matters.
Ofc, this sort of reform is better than no reform... as long as it doesn’t kill momentum for bigger, realer change (political capital here is a limited resource).

But let’s be realistic abt what it is, and what really happened/drove whatever changes happened in Portugal.

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More from @JohnFPfaff

26 Jan
Sigh.

Now, TBF, the Feds rely on privates a lot more than the publics do--at nearly twice the rate (even though 76% of ppl in privates are held by the states). But still: 85% of Feds in publics!

But: don't see how this addresses racial equity, for two equally important reasons.
First, and less appreciated, if you're concerned abt racial impact of privatization in prisons, the PRISONS are not the thing to focus on.

Focus on Bob Barker (private commissary, and not that one), Securus (pay-phones), etc.

HUGE private fees w racially disparate impacts.
Second, no one ever seems to game out what closing the privates will do.

It reduces capacity, but there's a lot of excess capacity out there right now. Will the Feds just contract with, say, Texas (not a private! it's public!)?

And if they d cut back pops, who will be released?
Read 8 tweets
11 Jan
I'd like to second, third, and fourth this.

Every time I argue that less-harsh sentences are the better ones that all should receive, I hear this: "leniency for all requires severity for all first."

This strikes me as a complete miscomprehension of the politics of punishment.
Once you pass a harsh law, it's really hard to be That Guy who repeals it.

It's also why I think we should emphasize leniency when DAs set plea deals over expanding parole.* It's easier to set a shorter sentence up front than shorten a long one.
When Obama commuted Chelsea Mannings sentence, there was a lot of outrage.

But it was fascinating outrage. No one that I saw said "7 years is too short." Everyone said "1/3 of her 21 years is too short."

If the orig sentence had been 8 yrs, bet far far less outrage.
Read 9 tweets
11 Jan
"Our party egged people on to storm the Capitol, murder a police officer, and appear to have ensured that the Capitol was under-protected in an effort to overturn a legitimate election.

You've... pointed that out. And demanded accountability.

So who is REALLY at fault here?"
This would be pathetic, if it weren't such clear evidence that the GOP not only have learned nothing from this, but is doubling down on its culture of right-wing victimhood.

It's just going to keep getting worse.

But seriously: this is disgusting and pathetic--and dangerous.
And again: I don't want to hear any GOPers talk about the need to "take personal responsibility" ever again.

Having stoked an insurrection, they now equate demands for accountability with "playing politics."

Such bald (and yes, unsurprising) hypocrisy.
Read 4 tweets
8 Oct 20
So this disability q is fantastic. The 25A and the Presidential Succession Act do not define "disability" and provide no method for automatically removing authority from an unwilling President.

Pence was a total coward for not answering.

Tho we know the answer.

#VPDebate
Trump will never voluntarily concede authority to any VP.

The 25A says that the VP and the cabinet can take authority, but only until POTUS writes a letter saying he's good. Which Trump would do instantly.

At that point, takes 2/3 House and Senate to put VP back in charge.
In short, neither the Constitution nor the Presidential Succession Act are remotely prepared for a Mad King scenario.

Even when POTUS is on a drug known for delusions and views of grandeur, we have no way to make the President step down/step back.
Read 4 tweets
7 Oct 20
We should stop calling it "Court Packing" and instead call it the "Court Modernization Act."

Which, to be fair, it is. Does it make sense to keep running SCOTUS the exact same way we did before penicillin, the car, the computer, pretty much all of modern life?
Expand the Court, and set it at an even number (which is Originalist too, since the first Court had six).

And professionalize it too. Nothing in the Constitution requires the Justices' only real assistants to be recent law school graduates.
If you think abt it, the current design is utterly bonkers (sorry, many of my colleagues; but it is).

We call on Justices to decide antirust one day, crim justice the next, employment law then the history of gun ownership after that.

Aided by 4 20-something legal generalists.
Read 5 tweets
6 Oct 20
Wait, when I applied to clerk, back in the summer/fall of 2001, this was the basic (if new) rule. Guess it quickly fell apart?
Which reminds me: I had a judge email me the afternoon (!!) of 9/11/01 to say he was grounded in Chicago and could just interview me then. And I said yes, bc... young, and you “don’t say no”! And so I sat in a hotel bar, watching the towers fall on repeat and just... it went bad.
With hindsight, I mean... who emails a law student to conduct an interview bc he might as well, given he’s grounded due to a national catastrophe we are STILL working thru.

He looked out the hotel window. I looked at the bar, and thus at the TVs. It was surreal. And wrong.
Read 4 tweets

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