A Problem for Westen

(link)

The article is about a Virginia law that provides sentencing guidelines based on predictions of future criminal activity. Of course, this is a blatantly utilitarian model for sentencing that results in different people committing the same crime and being punished differently - so much for the correspondence principle.

Then again, this already happens. Judges get to choose incarceration times, and surely they consider the threat to the community when sentencing, even if they are only supposed to consider desert. This is one of those tensions in the law that are so intellectually maddening yet eminently practical.

But here the legislature wrote out explicit guidelines - the evidence of unequal treatment under the law is given, as opposed to implied. I imagine that if a case were to arise, it would stem from a person being sent to prison where someone else with different characteristics is given probation. I imagine the incarcerated criminal would be pretty pissed that he's being locked up; just because he's young/unemployed/some other characteristic.

Anyway, I found it interesting. Perhaps you all will too.