Justice, Punishment and Forgiveness: When Should Law Forgive? (#90)

Former Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow argues for greater forgiveness by the law and the justice system. Using examples from around the world, she shares how forgiveness can lower crime and reduce incarceration. She warns about the highly punitive American justice system which forgives bankruptcy but not misdemeanors. The very same kind of crime in the United States and in Sweden or in Finland, will produce in the United States perhaps a 20 years' sentence, and in one of those Scandinavi...