In my original "The Left Goes Bonkers," I described a theory that the Just Compensation Clause entitles criminals to whitewash their record and fabricate their resumes' by just making stuff up (or composing "from whole cloth," as the theorist candidly acknowledged).
I had no idea that, instead of merely whitewashing one's prior stint in prison, the Left would come up with the idea of whitewashing -- or more correctly, eliminating altogether -- prison itself.
And no, I am not making this up. The idea is advanced by Prof. Allegra McLeod of Georgetown University Law Center. If Prof. McLeod has missed a single liberal shibboleth, I haven't been able to think of it. Below is one paragraph from the abstract of her piece (courtesy of SL&P):
[T]his Article explores a form of grounded preventive justice neglected in existing scholarly, legal, and policy accounts. Grounded preventive justice offers a positive substitutive account of abolition that aims to displace criminal law enforcement through meaningful justice reinvestment to strengthen the social arm of the state and improve human welfare. This positive substitutive abolitionist framework would operate by expanding social projects to prevent the need for carceral responses, decriminalizing less serious infractions, improving the design of spaces and products to reduce opportunities for offending, redeveloping and "greening" urban spaces, proliferating restorative forms of redress, and creating both safe harbors for individuals at risk of or fleeing violence and alternative livelihoods for persons subject to criminal law enforcement. By exploring prison abolition and grounded preventive justice in tandem, this Article offers a positive ethical, legal, and institutional framework for conceptualizing abolition, crime prevention, and grounded justice together.
I am seldom left speechless, but this time...................
I would like to say that this is argument #53475 against student published law reviews but then....
I'll take the bait here (at my own risk). I don't think all crimes and all criminals are created equal. At least some, at capable of redeeming themselves, and for those who do, I do not think their previous criminal past should be held against them.
However, the tricky part here is how does one which criminal is reformed and which one is not? The costs of being wrong here can be severe, and it makes a lot of sense to do take the safer option as opposed to assuming every criminal has learned his or her lesson after a stint in prison. Perhaps someday there will be a way to identify those who have reformed, but until then, it is logical to err on the side of caution.
P.S. - This article was really poorly written and made some off the wall legal analogies. The term "rebiography" is a good one though -- I wonder if I can re-biography myself to have a law degree from Harvard and a Super Bowl ring.
Nailed it.
Every important decision in life carries the risk of error. The only question adults get to ask is who should bear that risk. To me, it seems clear that it should be borne by the person whose choices and actions put us to this test, not by his potential victims, even understanding that "potential" means just that.
I may have mentioned this before, but my contractor on the mainland (and his wife) live in my house for 10 weeks during the winter while I'm in Hawaii. He went to prison (not in this state) for getting in a fistfight with a state trooper when he was in his 20's and pretty headstrong.
But he's and honest, honorable man. Part of that is that he never hid his past from me.
People do grow up, sometimes to become better and sometimes worse. I believe in second chances, but I believe they are earned. I do not believe in concealment and lying, and still less do I believe the Constitution entitles anyone to whitewash his history.
Personally, I'm planning to "rebiography" myself in the mold of LeBron James, so I can be a young, strong celebrity athlete rather than an old, tottering obscure part-time law professor. I wonder if Prof. McLeod will put me on her basketball team.