Arianna Huffington on Crime 2004 former Independent Challenger for CA Governor

We can choose books or bars; we've built bigger prisons

Sadly, in that prison population are 150,000 children. Too many of America's schools have become preparatory facilities not for college but for jail. When the choice has come down to books versus bars, our political leaders have chosen to build bigger prisons rather than figure out how to send fewer kids to them. How is it that we are willing to spend so much more on kids AFTER they are found guilty of crimes than we are when they could really use the help?

In the end, the blame for the chronic inability to fix our educational system has to be laid at the feet of our leaders in Washington. Every candidate promises to transform our schools--and fail to do so.

Philosophically opposed to the death penalty

HUFFINGTON: I’m philosophically opposed to the death penalty and very opposed to the way it has been applied in California and across the country. At a time when new DNA testing has known that innocent people are being put to death by government, I absolutely would want a moratorium. The only reason we do not have more elected officials asking for a moratorium is because they only follow the polling results and they are spineless to speak their own minds and hearts.

You would commute death penalties out there?

HUFFINGTON: I would have to change the law. As a governor, I have to ensure that the laws are being imposed properly. But I would actually go out there and use the bully pulpit to convince the people of California of what is right.

Roll back $1B prison guard pay raise: books, not bars

Moratorium on capital punishment based on racial disparity

Mandatory minimum sentencing is cowardly

Millions of underprivileged minors are crowding our prisons, all the result of crowd-pleasing but cowardly mandatory minimum sentencing law. This is modern politics at its worst. Such bad policy can only serve to erode the public’s already shaky trust in democracy.

Investigate anti-depressants’ role in school shootings

“Mania” pretty much describes Harris’s web site, on which he wrote: “My belief is that if I say something, it goes. I am the law. If you don’t like it, you die.” This should have troubled any doctor who was following Harris after he was put on Luvox. Or was Harris one of the tens of thousands of children cavalierly prescribed anti-depressants without either a proper psychiatric evaluation or any ongoing monitoring of side effects?

In the aftermath of the Littleton massacre, President Clinton proposed new laws to restrict the marketing of guns to children, and hosted a conference to examine the entertainment industry’s marketing of violence to children. But no one [considered] the third problem-the marketing of mood-altering prescription drugs for children.