Are we prepared, as a society, to pay more than lip service to the presumption of innocence? If we are, then it’s time to we offered to pay for the legal defense of anyone accused of a crime. Anything less amounts to the most regressive tax of all, a tax which devastates the middle class while encouraging the growth of a government detached from the consequences of its actions.
Let’s begin with fundamentals: The United States incarcerates more persons per capita than any other industrial nation on Earth. What’s more, the sentences we impose are disproportionately longer than those imposed in other countries. In sum, the land of the free is in the grip of over-criminalization.
