Diane Dimond's New Site
Did you enjoy the 243rd birthday of our country over this long weekend? Wait a minute. Do I hear some grousing out there? Is that grumbling I hear about the state of the nation? Complaints that everything is not perfect in the USA?
Get a grip, people. No nation can be faultless in its operation. We are, after all, a group of flawed human beings trying to govern ourselves as best we can. [Read more…]
See if you can find the logic in this. A local government issues traffic fines to residents for infractions like not wearing a seat belt, expired registration tags or a broken taillight. If the fine isn’t promptly paid then interest and penalties pile up and soon a $50 or $100 ticket can quickly balloon to many thousands of dollars.
If a person cannot afford to promptly pay the full ticket what sense does it make to keep piling on extra monetary demands? [Read more…]
How is it that someone accused of dozens of criminal acts can throw millions of dollars at a problem and pay his way out of trouble?
That is what’s happening with Horrible Harvey Weinstein, except if all goes as planned he won’t be paying out anything. His insurance companies will handle the payoffs to the tune of at least $44 million. [Read more…]
Guess how much our nation’s system of mass incarceration costs each year? I’m talking about the taxpayer funded budgets of prisons, jails, probation departments and the public employees who staff them. Add in the cost of running the criminal justice system; the amount spent on health care, food and incidentals for inmates and the financial burden on families that have a person in the system.
Put all that together and guess how much we, collectively, spend on our system of imprisonment in the United States? [Read more…]
So democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders wants to give all prisoners the right to vote. He said so during a recent campaign speech, much to the surprise of many. I was among them.
Sanders believes “the right to vote is inherent to our democracy” and even “terrible people” like the Boston Marathon bomber should be allowed to participate. No other democratic candidate has gotten behind this idea, although several have said they support returning the right to vote to convicts after their release.
This is not one of my typical crime and justice columns. This one comes from a personal place.
I love the television show Jeopardy. I adore host Alex Trebek and I watch the program whenever I can. . So, when the contestant, James Holzhauer, recently started racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars, and then reached more than $1.6 million before a two-week hiatus, I was spellbound! Holzhauer is on his way to, perhaps, beating the all-time Jeopardy champ, Ken Jennings, who took home more than $2.5 million in 2004. I can’t wait to see if that record is broken. [Read more…]
Did you enjoy the 243rd birthday of our country over this long weekend? Wait a ...
See if you can find the logic in this. A local government issues traffic fines ...
Seventy-five years ago, tens of thousands of brave and selfless young men from the United ...
How is it that someone accused of dozens of criminal acts can throw millions of ...
Guess how much our nation’s system of mass incarceration costs each year? I’m talking about ...
