“A prison inmate can’t commit a crime on the outside, so the longer the sentence, the safer we are, right? That is a tenet of the law-and-order movement, which arose in reaction to violent protests in American cities in the 1960s and has dictated criminal-justice policy for 50 years. But as Rachel Elise Barkow, a widely respected legal scholar at New York University School of Law and an expert in the administration of criminal justice, explains in her important new book, “longer sentences can actually threaten public safety.”“

The American Scholar

April 18, 2019