A 'Holocaust in Slow Motion?' America's Mass Incarceration and the Role of Discretion
7 DePaul Journal for Social Justice 117 (2014)
U of St. Thomas (Minnesota) Legal Studies Research Paper No. 14-30
62 Pages Posted: 1 Sep 2014
Date Written: 2014
Abstract
Numbers don’t lie: America has suffered an explosion in imprisonment that has been fundamentally unrelated to actual crime levels. In this article, a federal District Court Judge and a former federal prosecutor examine the roots of this explosion with a focus on the discretion of Congress, the United States Sentencing Commission, federal prosecutors, and judges. This dark period may be in its twilight, though, and the authors conclude by describing specific actions each of these four groups could take to dismantle the cruel machinery of mass incarceration.
Keywords: mass incarceration, sentencing, prosecutorial discretion, Eric Holder
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