CONSERVATIVE PRINCIPLES: CRIMINAL JUSTICE
· We need to be tough on some crimes but we also need to be smart about how we manage criminal offenders.
· The criminal justice system should prioritize public safety by focusing on individuals who represent a serious threat to society.
· The criminal justice system not only punishes offenders, it saves lives. It saves lives of potential victims but it also saves the lives of offenders, drug addicts, and alcoholics. Used appropriately, the criminal justice system is also a source of good.
· Science, tradition, and cultural values should be used to guide criminal justice policy, this includes retribution.
· Criminal justice should remain local and decentralized.
· Federal criminal justice should remain restricted in scope and influence.
· Intervention efforts with families, with drug addicts and alcoholics, and with juveniles should be based in science and should be externally validated.
· Efforts to increase the electronic surveillance of citizens, through data-mining, drones, police-controlled cameras, or through red light cameras, should be better regulated by the courts.
· Mandatory arrest policies should be overturned.
· Efforts to increase the certainty and immediacy of state intervention should be made. Programs, such as the HOPE program in Hawaii, should be implemented more broadly.
· Redemption, once achieved, should be recognized by the criminal justice system.
· The criminal justice system should prioritize public safety by focusing on individuals who represent a serious threat to society.
· The criminal justice system not only punishes offenders, it saves lives. It saves lives of potential victims but it also saves the lives of offenders, drug addicts, and alcoholics. Used appropriately, the criminal justice system is also a source of good.
· Science, tradition, and cultural values should be used to guide criminal justice policy, this includes retribution.
· Criminal justice should remain local and decentralized.
· Federal criminal justice should remain restricted in scope and influence.
· Intervention efforts with families, with drug addicts and alcoholics, and with juveniles should be based in science and should be externally validated.
· Efforts to increase the electronic surveillance of citizens, through data-mining, drones, police-controlled cameras, or through red light cameras, should be better regulated by the courts.
· Mandatory arrest policies should be overturned.
· Efforts to increase the certainty and immediacy of state intervention should be made. Programs, such as the HOPE program in Hawaii, should be implemented more broadly.
· Redemption, once achieved, should be recognized by the criminal justice system.
