The title of this post is the headline of this new extended Reason piece authored by Scott Shackford. I recommend the piece in full, and here is how it gets started and its headings:
With the passage of the FIRST STEP Act just before Christmas, 2018 has been a banner year for incremental reforms to our awful criminal justice system. We've seen efforts to reduce levels of incarceration and the harshness of prison sentences, particularly those connected to the drug war; further legalization of marijuana in the states; and efforts to constrain the power of police to seize people's property and money without convicting them. While all this was happening, crime mostly declined in America's largest cities.
But we've also seen increased deliberate efforts to crack down on voluntary sex work by conflating it with forced human trafficking. And, despite learning from the drug war that harsh mandatory minimum sentences don't reduce the drug trade, lawmakers and prosecutors are yet again pushing for more punishment to fight opioid and fentanyl overdoses.
Here are some highlights (and lowlights) of American criminal justice in 2018:
The FIRST STEP Act passed (finally)....
Marijuana legalization continued apace....
Civil Asset Forfeiture under the microscope....
Attorney General Jeff Sessions shown the door....
The war on sex trafficking leads to online censorship, not safety....
Treating opioid overdose deaths as murders....
Reducing dependence on cash bail....
This strikes me as a pretty good list, though it leaves out some notable state-level developments such as Florida's vote to retrench its expansive approach to felon disenfranchisement and lots of state-level work on reducing collateral consequences.
I welcome reader input on other criminal justice reforms (or just events) from 2018 that they think worth remembering.
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