Sentencing

Two weeks after it voted to remove criminal penalties for marijuana possession, a Vermont Senate committee has voted to halve the quantities of heroin or cocaine necessary to trigger a trafficking charge.

The drug laws just got tougher in Australia's Queensland. The parliament there passed a bill increasing penalties for Ecstasy, PMA, and a number of other drugs, added "analogues" to the list, and made it a crime to provide items used to make drugs.

With "Women Behind Bars," investigate journalist Silja Talvi has produced a tour de force that should shame every American who reads it -- and, one can only hope, help to propel them to take action.

The Philippines may no longer execute drug offenders, but it is still handing out horrendous sentences. This week, a man was sentenced to life in prison for selling less than two grams of marijuana.

Giving or selling any amount of marijuana to a minor can get you 10 years in South Dakota, but now the state attorney general wants to increase those penalties for all but small amounts, and his bill is moving in the legislature.

A debate on drug policy is gathering steam in Vermont, where the legislature is set to ponder both marijuana decriminalization and harsher sentencing for some hard drug offenses.

Ecuador's President Rafael Correa, the son of a man once imprisoned on drug charges in the US, has called for pardons for low-level drug mules serving long sentences in his country's prisons.

With California facing a $14 billion budget deficit, the governor's budget cutters have come up with a proposal to release more than 22,000 nonviolent offenders before their sentences are up.

A report released this week by the Justice Policy Institute finds that racially disparate sentencing is the norm in the nation's most populous counties.

A smarter and more humane approach to crime and imprisonment, including drug decriminalization, could save billions of dollars and greatly reduce the need to put millions of people behind bars, a new report says.