Can you help my daughter with a school project
 

My daughter is doing a high school english project, and is having trouble finding source material. Her report will focus on prison sentences, disproportionate to the crime. Specifically, I think that she wants information on light sentences for violent (hate) crimes, and harsh sentences for non-violent crimes. What this has to do with english...I don't know. I told her that I would ask you guys if anyone knows of any websites that would have source material that she can reference, I would appreciate it.

If she knows any specific cases the US Department of Justice and NY times websites are great.

P.S. make sure she remembers her annotated bibliography with anything she uses online.

increasing disproportionality for hate crimes: http://www.issues-views.com/index.ph...2/article/1199

irwin chemerinsky, from my alma mater USC, speaks on punishment disproportionality in California: http://lawweb.usc.edu/lawmag/archive...s/supreme.html

and of course, google on 'cruel and unusual punishment': http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...=Google+Search

Re: Can you help my daughter with a school project
 

She already jumped ahead to the conclusion before doing the research? ;)

Perhaps it's a position paper with assigned positions?

Now, I'm not really supposed to plug my own website, but this part of it may come in useful. It's a campaign about trying to get more justice in rape trials. Ok, it's about the UK system, and it's quite specific, but there is a lot of info, a lot of links, and a fairly busy forum on it (which is a permanent pain to keep moderated! Although the feature where all posts get emailed to me is a big help in this...) (Sorry, I'm waffling...). It may at least get you started and give you some base info to look at/some links to start your search with.

Good luck, and I hope it goes well for you.
The site is at http://www.broadcaster.org.uk/sectio...ign_frames.htm

I don't know if this is quite what you're looking for, but the Bureau of Justice Statistics website is one I have used many, many times in my college career.

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/

Here is some information that came up on the National Criminal Justice Reference System, also one I have used many times. http://www.ncjrs.org/hate_crimes/facts.html

I am not sure about what you mean by " information on light sentences for violent (hate) crimes, and harsh sentences for non-violent crimes." Is she looking for sentencing information on white-collar crimes, discrepancies between sentencing between different types of drugs, etc?

Proquest is a very useful resource in finding articles and journals. also, if you go to a homepage of a university, you might check out their library online. My university library homepage has an extensice online database.

NORML has a section on drug laws that van be used for reference in teh case of harsh sentences for nonviolent drug use

http://www.norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=3378