Reflections on, and a tweaked front page after, a full year of the Sentencing Matters Substack

Because he has supplied the majority of (terrific) content at the Sentencing Matters Substack, it is only fitting that Jonathan Wroblewski has the honor and privilege (and burden?) of authoring a first “year in review” essay overt there.  In this SL&P blog post last summer, I noted the start of this new endeavor, explaining my hope that the substack medium would prompt me to “make more time for more longer-form sentencing commentary” beyond the reporting and shorter form commentary I tend to post here.  I am pleased to be able to report that managed to post nearly a dozen longer-form sentencing-relatedt essays over at the Sentencing Matters Substack in the last year.

But Jonathan has really taken to the medium, and he has helped to ensure we have a new essay or interview or other fresh content posted every week.  His new essay with reflections on the year that was, titled “The Sentencing Matters Substack: One Year In; We’ve surprised ourselves with this project; and we hope to expand and improve it in year two,” should be read in full over at Sentencing Matters Substack.  (Going to the substack also reveals a new-look homepage, which now has a few outside links and now formats some content thematically.)  Here are breif excerpts from the latest essay which should whet appetites for the whole piece:

[W]e thought what was missing from the current offerings was a forum for timely, longer-form commentary about sentencing law and policy and their connection to effective self-government, to justice, and to the larger world. Together with other related features, like interviews of some of the fascinating people involved in sentencing, we believed such a forum could bring an insight or two about sentencing and beyond, and maybe, too, help build a small community of learning….

On the subject of sentencing itself, we continue to think it matters and is worthy of serious consideration. As we’ve said before, at its core, sentencing is our government, acting on our behalf, inflicting pain and obligation on our fellow citizens as an accounting for those citizens’ misdeeds.  Punishment, and the difficult issues it raises, is as old as Adam and Eve and as fresh as Puff Diddy.  Formal punishment happens every week, thousands of times, in courts all across the country….

While we are generally pleased — and a bit surprised — with the Substack and how it has evolved over this last year, we think there are ways it can be improved to be more useful and enjoyable to those who read it, and to us too. Mostly we’d love to bring in new voices and new perspectives to the conversation. During the first year, we welcomed a number of guest essayists….

We’d especially like to include more on what’s happening in the state courts and state legislatures.  Most criminal prosecutions are brought at the state level, and my particular history and focus has skewed our coverage almost exclusively to the federal system.  We’d love to feature other academics, including younger ones, who are thinking about sentencing and corrections.  We’d love to hear from those working at state sentencing commissions or in the state courts. State sentencing commissions are the hidden innovators in sentencing and corrections policy.  And we’d be open to others too.