Monday Morning Links

Assorted content to start your week.

- Dan Gardner eviscerates the Cons for their stubborn insistence on mandatory minimum sentences in even the most ridiculous of cases:

Imagine a university student living in a rented apartment with her boyfriend, suggests University of Toronto criminologist Tony Doob. She grows a single marijuana plant. She rolls a joint for her and her boyfriend. And just like that she's a "trafficker" subject to a mandatory minimum sentence of nine months in jail.

Are these outcomes simple, clear, and predictable? Hardly. They're shocking as hell. But mandatory minimums have a nasty tendency to do that.

Remember the infamous case of the pizza thief sent to prison for life in California? The law didn't say "pizza thieves shall get a life sentence." The law said anyone convicted of a third felony would get a life sentence. Pizza theft is normally a misdemeanour. But that poor sap had committed previous felonies and a different law said that petty theft committed by anyone convicted of felonies must be prosecuted as a felony. So misdemeanour pizza theft became his third felony and he was sent to prison for life - an outcome almost everyone thought was insane.
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(M)andatory minimums don't actually do away with discretion.

They merely transfer it from judges, by restricting their ability to choose the sentence, to prosecutors, who choose the charge. The system is still ambiguous, uncertain, and unpredictable. It's just ambiguous, uncertain, and unpredictable in a different way.

Mandatory minimums are a fraud.

- Adrienne Clarkson profiles Rathika Sitsabaiesan's journey from refugee to MP - precisely at a time when Canadians are being asked to crack down on such new arrivals.

- Yes, it's impressive to see even Mark Carney taking a positive view of the Occupy movement. But let's wait to see whether that recognition is reflected in the monetary policy Carney coordinates with a government far more inclined toward empty words than any meaningful action to ensure a fairer or more stable economy.

- Finally, Paul Krugman points out that institutions tend to generate patterns of behaviour - meaning that an utter refusal to acknowledge obvious misconduct both figures to reflect greater problems that already exist, and creates an expectation that even worse actions will go similarly unaddressed. Insert Tony Clement reference here.