Here's something you don't see every day, a principled, conservative argument for going easy on felons. What's even more unusual is that it's a pretty sound prescription. Essentially the argument is to bring back the pardon as a social policy tool to encourage good behavior after felons serve their prison terms.
It's an intriguing idea and, after a lot more meat gets put on the bones of this article, I could see myself supporting this. The major problem will be governors who start up the old political favors or cash contributions for pardons scam. The current solution of limiting pardons to a select few cases is one way to do it but we need to do better.
Posted by TMLutas at March 18, 2004 03:09 PM