Incarceration as social pollution . . .

From the loonatic legal policy desk, here's a completely crazy idea for addressing the problem of increasing incarceration rates in our country (I know it's absurd because my professor told me so). I propose we address incarceration in much the same way the nations of the world (with a few noteable exceptions) have decided to address global pollution; i.e. something like the Kyoto Protocols, but for reducing incarceration rates. After all, couldn't one argue that incarceration, as the result of criminal activity, is a bit like social pollution? An unfortunate and undesireable but necessary by-product of modern society?

Here's the basic idea.

A balance needs to be struck between putting the dangerous and deserving criminals behind bars and creating a genuine incentive for our legislatures (and the correctional industry) to let the non-dangerous, less-deserving criminals back into society where they might contribute to, rather than burden, society. Here I assume that our current zealous sentencing guidelines, combined with a growing private industry in incarceration, are artificially inflating sentences and attaching prison sentences to crimes for which other punishments would be more appropriate.

To force state (and federal) legislatures to genuinely weigh the severity of crime against the punishment, instead of rubber-stamping appalingly stiff sentences for fear of being perceived as not "tough on crime," we might simply create tradeable incarceration allowances for (for the sake of argument) States. We establish (if such doesn't already exist) a means of measuring the number of people incarcerated by each State for some established period. If a State goes over their quota for a given period, they may buy allowance credit from a State that was under quota or pay a fine.

Hey . . . it's in the CRAZY legal ideas section; what'd you expect?