Gov. Asa Hutchinson said the state needs to get serious about sentencing reform if it is to cope with its exploding prison population. Disparate treatment in the justice system leads, among others, to excessive (and expensive) sentences.

Mara Leveritt smashes that stroke right back at the governor with the case of Tim Howard, a former Death Row inmate convicted in a retrial by a jury that believed the sentence it reached qualified Howard for immediate release from prison. It did not.

She writes:

Illustrating the governor’s message

Prison is political. Imprisonment in Arkansas is out of control. Gov. Asa Hutchinson is trying to rein in the politics that are letting our prison rates cripple this state.

Good for him. We have guidelines for this part of government. Politics too often override them.