Imagine All the Prisons . . . Gathering Dust

An article in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine put forth an interesting question: should we get rid of prisons or, in the words of the article, "decarcerate?" The article wonders locking people up is our country's "moral blind spot" and whether it will go down in history along with slavery as a blotch on an otherwise civilized culture. While it seems unfathomable (and it's pointed out that the goals of "abolitionists" right now involve prison and sentencing reform, rather than true abolition), it seems to be working in Finland, where the rate of incarceration has dropped dramatically in recent years without an concurrent increase in crime.