criminal justice
Vermont, can we go it alone?
I write about Vermont. Others with greater knowledge than I cover the national landscape. My feelings about how we’re doing as a nation are informed by the writers I follow… Read More
How To Spend a Windfall
I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth… …but the $2.7B one-time federal tsunami of cash coming into a state of 624,000 people is a big deal,… Read More
Brave New World?
The pandemic foreplay we’re muddling through confronts each of us with life-threatening risk and prospective opportunities for renewal. Anyone not rethinking their own life, human life in general, a rationale… Read More
Comments to Vt State College System Board 082219
Comments to Vt State College System Board 082219 The White Paper (Paper) does a credible job assessing the current challenges faced by VSCS (the System). It’s light, however, on offering… Read More
Before We Build New Prisons, Let’s Fix the System that Fills Them
VT Digger column – Schubart H. 543, a funding bill to study options for building new prisons has both drawn ire and nonsense from those supposed to act on it,… Read More
Vermont Leaning Forward: The Vermont Problem – Solutions Wiki
“We have moved from a relatively slow pace of change to an exponential rate. The rate of technological change is estimated to double every decade. Thus, so much is happening… Read More
Criminal Justice: A Broken System
In the criminal justice system, three groups have agency: the victim, the offender, and society at large. Our ability to balance these interests will determine the efficacy of our criminal… Read More
False Economies
As the legislative biennium winds down, it’s time to consider what happened, what didn’t, and more important, why? Many Vermonters are vocal about wanting their government branches to change how… Read More
Freedom of Information, Criminal Records, & Accountability
By way of full disclosure, I’m Chair of the VT Journalism Trust, doing business as VTDigger.org, serve on the Board of the VT ACLU, and am a former Chair of… Read More
The Land of the Free … in Jail
The most expensive service our government provides to its citizens, other than heroic healthcare in Medicare, Medicaid and the VA, is to lock them up. According to the Bureau of… Read More