Criminal justice is one of the more difficult issues for me to navigate in regard to commentary.

It's because I spent a significant chunk of my professional life working on content in this space. I've been inside several prisons. I've met two confessed murderers face to face -- even had lunch with one of them.

I'm a convert from the tough on crime, Joe Arpaio mentality -- everybody is an idiot in high school. Still, I never went full soft on crime for longer than a couple of days.

We have to eventually understand that no criminal justice system is ever going to be perfect because it's human, and it deals with humans, it deals with broken humans, and some broken humans can be repaired and some broken humans can't be repaired.

On top of all of that, it's a system that's stacked with people with perverse incentives and plagued by bad laws.

So, here are some thoughts...

Blackstone's ratio is still a good concept. In fact, it's essential. Not to harp on the Anthony Broadwater story, but...he did spend forty years on the sex offender registery for a rape that he didn't commit. This happens way too often because people on all sides of the political spectrum want swift justice. The thing is, swift justice is often unjust punishment. What's more, in this specific case, the rape did happen. They simply punished the wrong man. Of course, what everybody glossed over, was the fact that the real rapist went unpunished because an innocent man got wrongfully convicted.

After the Rittenhouse case, a lot of people on the illiberal left were complaining that, in regard to self-defense, the burden of truth often falls on the prosecution.

This was always a dumb gripe. The burden should always be on the prosecution. It should always take all twelve jurors to agree that you've committed a violent crime to land you behind bars. Even with due process, we screw up too much.
We should also have fewer laws that'll land you in prison. This is bipartisan. I've met a woman who spent more time in prison for dropping off a dime bag of meth than the murderers I've met -- that's mostly a right-wing problem. New Jersey just passed a law that would throw people in prison for five years for owning a vintage Revolutionary War musket -- that's entirely an illiberal leftist problem. You don't get to claim moral superiority in regard to criminal justice if you follow up your opposition to dumb laws with needlessly harsh sentences if you support your own dumb laws with needlessly harsh sentences.

To an extent, we need to acknowledge that the cash bail system can be bullshit. A close friend of mine spent a day in jail over a speeding ticket that he failed to pay. As he told it, his bail was less than $500, and there was an ATM in the next room that the police wouldn't let him use to pay his own bail. The correction to that bullshit isn't New York's, state-wide, cashless bail policy. That has resulted in dozens of cases of people who clearly committed several violent crimes and were/are awaiting trial, who were cut loose within 24 hours and reoffended. Sometimes, these people committed more than a dozen violent crimes, were out on bail, and finally killed somebody before the state of New York decided to keep them caged for more than a few hours.

There's a middle ground here.

We also have to understand that poverty can create criminality, while also understanding that criminality creates poverty.

Yes, there are the Aladdin's of the world who steal out of desperation; but, Aladdin isn't stealing yoga pants from high-end designers because he's starving. Most of these people are just leaches on the neck of society gaming a dumb system. Chicago, New York, San Francisco...really, most of California is falling apart because too many lawmakers and (air quote) enforcers have decided to not prosecute thieves who steal less than a certain value of merchandise. They're acting surprised that businesses are raising prices or leaving, and that cost of living is going up for the good and honest people.

Finally, despite the fact that I have a lot more thoughts on this subject, I'll just say that we have to understand that forgiveness is a deeply important value; but, that doesn't mean that we have to be stupid about it.

The tough on crime people tend to have a blind spot in regard to forgiveness. The soft on crime people tend to think that forgiveness means that we should all disregard what you did.

The two murderers that I met killed one person. One of them was fourteen when he killed his victim. The other was an adult and a drug addict when he killed his victim -- his victim was his drug dealer. These were men who were broken machines at the time who were able to be repaired. I've seen it first hand that even murderers can grow up, and evolve, and become decent people. The world is better off having these two men free than locked up.

It's not contradictory for me to also say that there are people who aren't fixable. What should be obvious is that most broken humans aren't fixed over night. If there's a pattern of violent behaviour, of course the person should be locked up for some time before he or she can demonstrate a change.

Some people will never demonstrate a change. Just read some transcripts of interviews with psychopaths if you can stomach it. Some people can account their vicious rape and murder of a child and chuckle at it. These aren't fixable people, and they should die in prison.

Forgiveness is still a healthy thing for victims, and the families of victims; but, a lot of states and districts -- almost exclusively Democrat -- take "forgiveness" to mean "Withholding punishment until somebody dies or doesn't agree with our politics."

I'm non-binary on this issue if the binary is tough on crime and soft on crime.

Let's just be right on crime. Let's strive for that. Let's keep broken humans in time-out until they're not broken anymore. Let's stop passing dumb laws with harsh penalties.

Let's just finally be smart about this.