State & Local Executive Branches

You know times are tough when even GOP-dominated legislatures in the Deep South are passing sentencing reform bills. It's not so much bleeding hearts as bleeding wallets.

In a bid to save money and be smarter on crime, Colorado has enacted a package of bills that, among other things, will reduce some drug use and possession sentences, allow greater judicial flexibility in sentencing, and keep some technical parole violators from being sent back to prison. But the package also increases some drug sales and manufacturing sentences.

Police in Columbia, Missouri, have endured all kinds of criticism in the week since a video of one of their SWAT raids went viral. This week, they issued new policies regarding SWAT raids. It's a start, but only a start.

Hard-line former Philadelphia DA Lynne Abraham is taking pot shots her successor, DA Seth Williams, over his policy of treating marijuana possession offenders more leniently. Williams and his crew are hitting back.

Reed College in Portland, Oregon, has a decades-old reputation for rigorous academics and counterculture values. Now, after two Reed students died of heroin overdoses in two years, state and federal prosecutors are lowering the boom, starting with this weekends' annual end of school-year party.

There will be no marijuana decriminalization in the Granite State -- at least not this year. A veto-wielding governor managed to scare off the state Senate after the House passed it overwhelmingly, but activists aren't giving up. Instead, they are vowing to return until the legislature gets it right.

At least some legislators in the Heart of Dixie are showing they have hearts. The Alabama House Judiciary Committee approved a medical marijuana bill this week.

Maine is about to become the latest state to set up a medical marijuana dispensary system. The measure has passed the legislature and the governor is expected to sign it.

Nederland now joins Denver and Breckenridge on the list of Colorado communities that have voted to remove penalties for adult marijuana possession. Durango could be next, and the whole state could vote on the issue in 2012.

Facing a severely clogged criminal court system, the city of Philadelphia will no longer prosecute small-time pot possession cases as criminal misdemeanors, but as summary offenses. But the cops will still arrest you anyway.