November 2008 Archives
This could get me in trouble.
A great empirical representation of recent policy topics. If you watched the election debates and subsequent discussions regarding McCain and Obama's tax policies, you'd think taxes or lack thereof held the key to the entire economy.
I just noticed that the audio from my lectures at FEE's Freedom University 2 this past summer are now up for your listening pleasure.
Evidence, of course, is the business of the courts, which must use it to decide on guilt or innocence. When it comes to sentencing, however, the legal system is often an evidence-free zone. A case in point is the Drug Treatment and Testing Order, a community sentence introduced in 1998. The rationale seemed sensible enough: therapy for drug offenders, backed up by mandatory testing, would reduce recidivism more effectively than prison. The only problem was that there was no evidence to back it up.
