3 Things Wrong With America's Criminal Justice System

If you read one article about the criminal justice system this year, make it this one from the Economist. If you read dozens of articles a day about this issue, make sure this is among them. Forward it to friends. Post it to Facebook. It's that good.

You're still here? I hope you have the Economist piece open in a tab.

Okay, here's why I like this piece so much.

Here at Change.org, we cover the American criminal justice system from many, many different angles and perspectives — but rarely do we (or anyone else for that matter) bring the whole system into focus in 3,000 words.

We write about the drug war and absurdly long sentences. We write about parole and alternatives to incarceration, juvenile justice, mental health, solitary confinement, wrongful convictions, private prisons, the list goes on. The beauty of the Economist piece — "Too many laws, too many prisoners" — is that it takes a step back, looks at the system as a whole, touches briefly on many central problems and paints a big picture of the disastrous system that readers will remember.

The piece opens with the story of George Norris, an elderly man with Parkinson's Disease sent to prison for missing some paperwork on orchids he imported. It tells of a pregnant woman sentenced to six years for selling Percocet. These examples bring the problem to life for the Economist's broad international readership. (Europeans do love to revel in our grandest fuck-ups, don't they?) The piece then boils the American criminal justice system down to three major flaws:

1. it puts too many people away for too long

2. it criminalizes acts that need not be criminalized

3. it is unpredictable

Bingo. It's a simple takeaway that isn't oversimplified. If someone asks you what's wrong with our system, those three bullet points would make a workable answer. The Economist story also gives some space to discuss solutions — drug treatment, shorter sentences, community corrections — to round out the picture.

In the last year or so, major media outlets have improved their coverage our criminal justice system's flaws, suggesting that we're near a tipping point at which public opinion finally accepts that long sentences and sprawling prisons are a mistake. With the state prison population showing its first decline in nearly 40 years, we need more thoughtful, in-depth pieces like this Economist article to help move the needle toward reform.

Photo Credit: kaz k