The Inner Monologue

Imagine walking into a voting booth and, among the usual candidates and propositions, finding a question that simply asks: “Which is worse — stealing a car or defrauding an elderly person out of their savings?”
Or perhaps: “Should repeat offenders face escalating sentences, or should rehabilitation always remain an option?”

These aren’t just moral puzzles — they are the building blocks of criminal justice. Yet, for all the talk of “law and order,” these foundational choices are usually made not by the citizens who live under them, but by small committees, appointed commissions, or bureaucrats shielded from direct accountability.

It’s time to change that. Citizens should have the right — and the responsibility — to differentially vote on sentencing guidelines.

The Hidden Hand of Justice

Most people assume that judges and juries decide sentences. In practice, sentencing commissions do.
These commissions — often unelected — establish detailed charts that weigh “offense severity” and “criminal history” to produce a “guideline range.” Judges can deviate, but only with explanation.

These guidelines are not neutral. They reflect moral choices about what society values — deterrence or redemption, retribution or restoration, punishment or prevention.
And yet, these moral choices are rarely made by the public.

Sentencing rules have been shaped by the politics of fear rather than by the will of the people. The “war on drugs,” “three strikes,” and “mandatory minimums” were sold as safety measures but built mass incarceration and racial disparity instead. They reflected legislative panic and political posturing, not deliberative democracy.

If the public had been given a direct, structured say — if citizens had been able to weigh “which is worse” through an informed ballot — our justice system might have evolved more humanely and more rationally.

Simple Questions, Profound Impact

The key is not to ask voters to design sentencing grids — that’s the commission’s job — but to guide them.
On the ballot, questions could be framed as value judgments that inform those grids.

For example:

Which is more harmful to society — violent assault or corporate fraud?

Should sentences be harsher for crimes against individuals or for crimes that undermine institutions?

Should rehabilitation be prioritized for nonviolent offenders?

Each answer helps steer the moral compass of sentencing policy. Aggregate these responses across millions of voters, and you get a data-driven moral map — one that reflects real public values, not political theater.

This system would not replace expertise; it would inform it. Lawmakers and judges could still interpret, but the baseline priorities would be democratic, transparent, and current.

Reclaiming Justice from Politicians

At present, “law and order” politics is a cynical game.
Politicians weaponize fear, cherry-pick extreme cases, and promise longer sentences — not because they reduce crime, but because they win votes. The result is a feedback loop of punitive policy disconnected from evidence and ethics.

Citizen-guided sentencing could break that loop. It would shift power away from opportunistic lawmakers toward a more consistent and measured public will.
When citizens vote issue-by-issue, divorced from party loyalties, they often demonstrate surprising wisdom and compassion. In state referenda, voters have supported marijuana decriminalization, rejected death penalties, and endorsed treatment over incarceration — even when their legislatures refused.

If citizens can vote on the legality of substances, the recognition of marriages, and the allocation of billions in public bonds, surely they can vote on the moral weighting of crimes.

The Democratic Moral Compass

Opponents will argue that voters are uninformed or emotional. But that critique applies equally to elected representatives — perhaps more so. Legislators are swayed by donors, headlines, and the next election cycle. Citizens, when given structured choices and clear information, tend to reveal the collective conscience of a community.

We already trust citizens to decide who governs, which taxes to pay, and which wars to support.
Why not trust them to decide which harms deserve greater censure?

A system of differential voting on sentencing guidelines could even become a civic ritual — a periodic reexamination of justice itself. It would reveal how public morality evolves. What a society deems “worse” today might not be what it deems “worse” tomorrow.

And that’s healthy. Law should follow the people, not precede them.

Implementation: From Idea to Ballot

Every few election cycles, citizens could be presented with a small slate of “justice calibration questions.”
For example:

For nonviolent offenses involving addiction, which approach should be prioritized?

(A) Incarceration

(B) Mandatory treatment

(C) Restitution to victims

Or:

Which should carry a heavier penalty: theft by violence or deception by trust?

The results would be aggregated and statistically normalized, feeding into state sentencing commissions as weighted moral preferences.
Judges and legislators would still apply professional judgment, but they would do so within a publicly ratified ethical framework — one visible to all, periodically updated, and grounded in the will of the governed.

The Long View

This isn’t a radical idea; it’s an extension of democracy.
A system that punishes in the name of the people should reflect the conscience of the people. Yet for too long, justice has been administered from above — shaped by professional elites and political opportunists.

Allowing citizens to participate in shaping sentencing guidelines would create a living feedback loop between law and morality. It would bring sunlight to the opaque mechanics of punishment. It would make “justice” something we all practice, not just endure.

Democracy, after all, is not merely the right to vote — it is the right to decide what is right and what is wrong.

The next evolution of that right should be this:
When the state asks, “What is justice?”
The people should answer — one ballot, one moral question, at a time.