Lots of activity in the Garden State laboratory

Justice Brandeis famously advanced the idea of states as “laboratories” in his New State Ice opinion.  As detailed in a number of local articles, the laboratory of New Jersey is abuzz with sentencing experiments:

1.  As detailed in this recent post and this new column, the New Jersey Commission to Review Criminal Sentencing is has produced two recent reports urging drug sentencing reforms.

2.  As detailed in this local article, a “federally funded study under way in Trenton is trying to determine whether Megan’s Law is worth the cost of its ‘enormously expensive’ monitoring and enforcement requirements.”  According to the story, researchers “said they were surprised to find that a steady decline in sex crimes across New Jersey had begun in 1991 — three years before Megan’s Law.”

3.  As detailed in this AP article, “New Jersey is set to consider becoming the first state to abolish the death penalty legislatively since capital punishment was reinstated 31 years ago.  A Senate committee is slated Thursday to consider replacing the death penalty with life imprisonment without parole.”