Cruel and Unusual: U.S. Sentencing Practices in a Global Context
The title of this post is the title of this notable new report released this week coming from the University of San Francisco School of Law s Center for Law and Global Justice. This press release provides a background and summary of this report, and here are excerpts from the press release:
Sentencing laws in the United States are at odds with the country’s human rights obligations to direct its prisons system towards rehabilitation, the University of San Francisco School of Law’s Center for Law and Global Justice said . in a report examining the sentencing laws of all the countries around the world. U.S. laws increasing the likelihood and length of prison sentences have created a prisons system out of step with the rest of the world. They help to explain why, despite a declining crime rate, the U.S. prison population has grown six-fold since 1980 to become the world’s largest per capita.