Thursday, January 13, 2011
A kidney for freedom
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) announced late Wednesday that he will grant an early release from prison to two sisters serving unusually long sentences for armed robbery (see clip above). Sally Satel and Ira Brody wrote a piece in the WSJ with a proposal for kidney donation:
"A prisoner donates a kidney and receives compensation only when his or her sentence is complete—no shortened sentences, no parole, no special considerations. The organ goes to the next person on the national transplant waiting-list, the way all organs from anonymous donors do."
The advantages, they say, are threefold: a patient languishing on dialysis is rescued, the government realizes savings and a cushion of financial security offers the prisoner a better chance at successful re-entry into society.
Link to the WSJ piece here.
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Very cool- I think that in lieu of the whole situation it's really decent of the governor to offer up the release that they should have been given a long time before and the kidney transplant as a sort of recompense. If they had just been released, obviously that would've been a blessing for them but they might have not been able to save the sister's life and I think it balances itself out because they were unfairly imprisoned for so many years- the reporter mentioned that they only played a small role in the robbery and the robbers themselves were already released so the double life sentence is way too over the line.
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