Link Salad, the Lockuptown Edition, Redux
-- One Judge Makes the Case for Judgment - Matthew Van Meter, The Atlantic, Feb. 25, 2016
"One of Coughenour’s favorite anecdotes from these visits is about a man from Everett, Washington, whose wife had multiple sclerosis. In the mid-1980s, the man was laid off from his job and, in desperate need of money, robbed five banks. Coughenour, who was then a young judge, now says, “I gave him a heavy hit.” A few years after he sentenced the man, Coughenour saw the bank robber again, this time in the meeting room at Sheridan. He sat across from him again six months later. And again the next year. “Every time I went back to Sheridan,” he says, “I saw this guy, and I started realizing how long it was that he was doing. And the meaning of time really hits you hard when you see these same guys there, year after year after year, and they’re still there. It’s easy to sit in an office room somewhere and say, ‘Well, you know, you rob a bank, you should get 10 years.’” But watching those decisions play out among real men in real time was something else entirely."
-- The Ultimate Terrorist Factory - Scott Sayare, Harper's Magazine, Jan. 2016
"The same dilemma applies to Daoudi. He has served his time in prison, and, unlike Beghal, he says that his thinking has changed. He would like “to be allowed to move on,” he told me. But, he concedes that he cannot be trusted, at least not in any absolute sense. “The problem,” he said, “is that you can’t trust anyone, I don’t think.” I asked him if he was ever tempted to join the fight in Syria. Daoudi reflected briefly. “No, no, I don’t think so,” he said, “My current thinking really is to refocus my energies on myself.” Were he more cynical, more strategic, or simply less thoughtful, he might have taken this opportunity to proclaim a definitive rejection of jihad. Instead it appears that he chose to be honest, to acknowledge the vagaries of conviction and belief. It stands to reason that this apparent sincerity will not be rewarded. It is possible, of course, that Daoudi remains a committed jihadist and has calculated that small admissions will help to obscure the larger truth of his dark intent. As he said about Beghal, how can we claim to know someone else?"
-- The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration - Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic, Oct. 2015
"Mass incarceration is, ultimately, a problem of troublesome entanglements. To war seriously against the disparity in unfreedom requires a war against a disparity in resources. And to war against a disparity in resources is to confront a history in which both the plunder and the mass incarceration of blacks are accepted commonplaces. Our current debate over criminal-justice reform pretends that it is possible to disentangle ourselves without significantly disturbing the other aspects of our lives, that one can extract the thread of mass incarceration from the larger tapestry of racist American policy."
"One of Coughenour’s favorite anecdotes from these visits is about a man from Everett, Washington, whose wife had multiple sclerosis. In the mid-1980s, the man was laid off from his job and, in desperate need of money, robbed five banks. Coughenour, who was then a young judge, now says, “I gave him a heavy hit.” A few years after he sentenced the man, Coughenour saw the bank robber again, this time in the meeting room at Sheridan. He sat across from him again six months later. And again the next year. “Every time I went back to Sheridan,” he says, “I saw this guy, and I started realizing how long it was that he was doing. And the meaning of time really hits you hard when you see these same guys there, year after year after year, and they’re still there. It’s easy to sit in an office room somewhere and say, ‘Well, you know, you rob a bank, you should get 10 years.’” But watching those decisions play out among real men in real time was something else entirely."
-- The Ultimate Terrorist Factory - Scott Sayare, Harper's Magazine, Jan. 2016
"The same dilemma applies to Daoudi. He has served his time in prison, and, unlike Beghal, he says that his thinking has changed. He would like “to be allowed to move on,” he told me. But, he concedes that he cannot be trusted, at least not in any absolute sense. “The problem,” he said, “is that you can’t trust anyone, I don’t think.” I asked him if he was ever tempted to join the fight in Syria. Daoudi reflected briefly. “No, no, I don’t think so,” he said, “My current thinking really is to refocus my energies on myself.” Were he more cynical, more strategic, or simply less thoughtful, he might have taken this opportunity to proclaim a definitive rejection of jihad. Instead it appears that he chose to be honest, to acknowledge the vagaries of conviction and belief. It stands to reason that this apparent sincerity will not be rewarded. It is possible, of course, that Daoudi remains a committed jihadist and has calculated that small admissions will help to obscure the larger truth of his dark intent. As he said about Beghal, how can we claim to know someone else?"
-- The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration - Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic, Oct. 2015
"Mass incarceration is, ultimately, a problem of troublesome entanglements. To war seriously against the disparity in unfreedom requires a war against a disparity in resources. And to war against a disparity in resources is to confront a history in which both the plunder and the mass incarceration of blacks are accepted commonplaces. Our current debate over criminal-justice reform pretends that it is possible to disentangle ourselves without significantly disturbing the other aspects of our lives, that one can extract the thread of mass incarceration from the larger tapestry of racist American policy."