Dominique Pelicot, who admitted to drugging and raping his wife for almost a decade and to inviting dozens of strangers to join him, was convicted on Thursday of aggravated rape and other charges and was sentenced to the maximum 20 years in prison. The court also convicted the 50 other defendants, most of them on rape charges. Catherine Porter, a New York Times reporter, followed the four-month trial and reports from Avignon.

We know that tough-on-crime policies for children have been tried repeatedly elsewhere and have failed. So why is my country headed that way?

An evidence-based approach to criminal justice would tell us that policing works and long prison sentences do not.

Readers worry that “our lives are at stake” if he becomes health secretary but also find areas of agreement. Also: Unity, not revenge; criminal justice in New York.

I am surrounded by men who live with regret. And that regret is an incarceration every bit as real as the towering walls around us.