Ever since Republican media consultant Roger Ailes saturated our television sets in the 1988 presidential election with the racist, shock-value image of Willie Horton raping our daughters while on furlough, politicians have been tripping over themselves and each other to appear tough on crime.
New Jersey’s legislators have hardly been immune to the ongoing promotion of hollow laws that purport to make us safer while actually rounding up more campaign contributions than criminals. Our drug-sentencing laws are one particularly embarrassing source of meaningless legislation.
