Taking a Pig And Calling it a Princess: The Economist & American Justice
The Economist is on a tear; it published endless examples in a series of articles of people going to prison for trafficking flowers or lobster tails and every conceivable innocuous act known to mankind. Use the search engine of your choice and combine “Economist” with prisons or crime.
The bottom-line of the series is that America incarcerates too many people for too many crimes.
"It seems odd that a country that rejoices in limiting the power of the state should give so many draconian powers to its government, yet for the past 40 years American lawmakers have generally regarded selling to voters the idea of locking up fewer people as political suicide. An era of budgetary constraint, however, is as good a time as any to try. Sooner or later American voters will realize that their incarceration policies are unjust and inefficient; politicians who point that out to them now may, in the end, get some credit."
They trot out the usual criminologists who favor less incarceration and sneer at those who favor confinement. Their claim is, as always, that incarceration does little to nothing to hold down rates of crime.
In many ways the Economist is correct, we probably do incarcerate too many people. And regardless of who is right, the states have made it clear that they cannot afford the current levels of incapacitation.
Whether they say it publicly or not, governors know that their budgets are in a jam because of prisons.
There are portions of the prison population that probably can be released to community supervision without greatly harming public safety. Older and women offenders have considerably lower rates of recidivism and, if given programs and accountability, large numbers (obviously not all) of both categories could probably be safely released.
So what’s wrong with this picture?
The Economist and the usual batch of anti-prison criminologists paint a picture of a precise, well-oiled criminal justice system that is ruthless in the pursuit of everyone for every reason. This well-funded system of forensic investigators and prosecutors plow through the lives of the marginally involved and stick them in prison for the next 100 years without parole.
Please tell us where this system of rough justice can be found.
Most crimes are not reported and most reported crime does not end up with an arrest. In many cities, the system is near the breaking point because of endless budget cuts that result in large numbers of arrests not prosecuted and, in some jurisdictions, the great majority of violent criminals are not indicted.
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