woman back to prison serve?  Why should tax payers be paying for her support for the next 20 years?  This is the kind of case that governors were given the power of commutation for.  

I'd have no trouble with some kind of community service or probation, but honestly, I just don't understand why it would advantage anyone to have her imprisoned.

because I think that she should not go back to prison but should do some kind of community service.

I guess I can't quite see letting her go without something, since she not only committed a crime but also escaped from prison -- but I don't think it's productive to send her back to prison.

I'll play the race/class card here. If Ms. LeFevre was African-American or Latino or escaped and was then found in the projects, would there be this same public outcry and lobbying of the governor? Call me cynical, but I think not.

The prosecution and punishment of illict drug-related crimes is an absolute travesty (believe me, I wrote a thesis on it for my masters). It has absolutely decimated generations of certain communities and has been ineffective in reducing consumption, which is supposed to be the societal good that these regimes are promoting. Yet so long as Other People (ie, not white middle class suburban mothers) were going to jail and not US, who stood up and said no? It wasn't Billy Joel who set up a coalition in NY to undo the draconian Rockerfeller Laws - it was Russell Simmons.

So yeah, I think that this woman's punishment was outsized to the crime. But why should this woman receive more lienancy than her sisters who live in, say, Harlem?

I'm sure she would have been productive in prison as well; working, studying, writing, becoming a spokesperson, perhaps finding religion.  the difference would have been a loss of her liberties for that length of time, the real punishment.  
I think the race/class issue is relevent and must be addressed.  Sending her back to serve the remainder of her sentence?  Probably not, but some time served and a very lenghty probation with community service attached would satisfy my rule of law nature

color I would say let her go.  Has there been a case like this involving an African American or a Latino?

Prison should serve a purpose.  Returning her does only harm - to her, her family, her community, and the taxpayers - but no possible good.

A community service requirement should be plenty for someone who is considered no threat to society.  And if being a white suburban mom is what gets her this, fine - it sets a legal precedent that can perhaps be more widely applied.  But let's not punish her just because others are punished unjustly - that moves in the wrong direction.

i say she be be required to work community service, perhaps helping other women who were in a similar situation rehabilitate themselves. she obviously had the willpower to put her own lesson to work. maybe she can help others.

sentence was initially draconian. 10-20 for selling drugs? rapists get out in 8 years these days. let her free, get her to share her knowledge with others.

I say let her rot in prison the next 20 years to play out her drug sentence.

The judge wrote, "anyone else who undertakes to live off other people's misery". He had it right. This one really hits me in the gut. In that same general time period, in that same vicinity, my bil died from tainted heroin. He could be living the masculine counterpart of this woman's idyllic suburban lifestyle, but for her and people like her who made drugs available for a quick buck. Drugs literally tore my husband's family apart. It's probably not my business to write about the private part here, but the consequences will be felt for generations.

There was mention in the documentation about a previous case. This doesn't seem to be a single, accidental screwup by a naive young kid caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. She knew what she was doing. How many families did she help destroy, like my husband's? "Whether you had any responsibility to getting those people addicted," said the judge. Saginaw hasn't ever really recovered. The crime rate is worse than that of Detroit, and per capita income is less than in Detroit (where you can't even get a fresh vegetable!). She, and others like her, contributed to the economic downfall of the state.

Speaking to her life now, what kind of message does it sent to her kids, that it's okay to screw up really, really bad when you're a young adult because you can just gloss over it and escape the consequences? I'd call that bad parenting on top of everything else.

sympathy for this woman.  She sold HEROIN not a joint at a grateful dead concert -- bullsh*t on this 'oohh she paid her debt"  she did not...she lived a better freaking life than I have after 42 years of nothing worse than one speeding ticket in my life.   She should go back to freaking jail and do her freaking time and get over her super duper specialness.  She's not special. she was a drug dealer.  

and word to that Rachel -- if she were black or latino we would never even know her name....

i think she needs to pay for the crime.  how of course is the question. i fear i am having a hard time with "community service" alone.

she was crafty enough to break out of jail and THEN go on to live a life in full view.  no question she is enterprising, but in my view, it is not a reason to set her free.

That's really what it comes down to. I think it serves two purposes - to protect society from those who would do it harm, and to rehabilitate individuals so they can reenter that society with little or no risk to others. There is no need to send her back - she isn't a danger to anyone, nor does she need rehabilitation.
Of course, there are those who think prison is there to punish. Honestly, I find that incredibly depressing. Punishment should be a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. I don't think anyone here would meet out punishment to their children just for the sake of punishing them when they do something wrong - you punish because you want that child to get better. Punishment without any purpose past "you broke the rules," is ugly at best, and an outrageous abuse of power at worst.
IMO, when you send someone to prison, you do your best to fix them, help them to have alternatives and make something of their lives, and get them the hell back out as quickly as possible so they can be productive. Where that isn't possible, you keep them in as long as you can justify. But that's not the case here. There would be no reason to lock her up except for a misguided and brutal sense of "justice."

Prison doesn't solve anything, it doesn't fix anything, it doesn't teach anyone a lesson.  I certainly doesn't send any "message" - or if it does, the message isn't exactly getting through in the country with the worlds highest imprisonment rate.

I've posted before about my brother the prison guard, and my opinions are very strongly influenced by him.  He believes prison should only be used to isolate the harmful ones who need to be "quarantined" away from the rest of us.

Nothing good ever comes out of putting someone in prison, or as my brother calls it, "crime college".  I really don't care what the prisoner deserves.  We need to return to a focus on what is good for society.  

she didn't have such a seemingly good life?  I don't get how this figures in.

Something else is bugging me about this story and this person: she knowingly married someone without revealing her history - heck without revealing even her real name. This is major history that might rain down a ton of pain on someone else, as is happening right now to her husband, not to mention her kids. Without giving that person a choice in the matter, at all.

I just couldn't do that to someone I respect, let alone love, personally. And I can't help but think that if she didn't respect her husband enough to tell him, she doesn't have much respect for other people in general. The whole thing could be read as sociopathic actually, even if she has never committed another official crime and was loved by her family.