Go Directly to Jail

by Gene Healy

At one time, the sanction of the criminal law was reserved for serious, morally culpable offenders. But during the past 40 years, an unholy alliance of tough-on-crime conservatives and anti-big-business liberals has utterly transformed the criminal law. Today, while violent crime often goes unpunished, Congress continues to add new, trivial offenses to the federal criminal code. The result is a labyrinthine criminal code, a burgeoning prison population, and often real injustice. Go Directly to Jail examines those alarming trends and proposes reforms that could rein in a criminal justice apparatus at war with fairness and common sense.