Thomas Sowell speaks some sense on the emotional hostility to prisons among liberals and their utopian belief in alternatives that address “root causes”:
Back in 1997, New York Times writer Fox Butterfield expressed the same lament under the headline, “Crime Keeps on Falling, But Prisons Keep on Filling.” Then, as now, liberals seemed to find it puzzling that crime rates go down when more criminals are put behind bars.
Nor is it surprising that the left uses an old and irrelevant comparison — between the cost of keeping a criminal behind bars versus the cost of higher education. According to the Times, “Vermont, Connecticut, Delaware, Michigan, and Oregon devote as much or more to corrections as they do to higher education.”The relevant comparison would be between the cost of keeping a criminal behind bars and the cost of letting him loose in society. But neither the New York Times nor others on the left show any interest in that comparison.
In Britain, the total cost of the prison system per year was found to be £1.9 billion, while the financial cost alone of the crimes committed per year by criminals was estimated at £60 billion.
The big difference between the two kinds of costs is not just in their amounts. The cost of locking up criminals has to be paid out of government budgets that politicians would prefer to spend on giveaway programs that are more likely to get them re-elected. But the far higher costs of letting criminals loose is paid by the general public in both money and in being subjected to violence.
11 Mar 2008 at 2:57 pm
I have always advocated that one way we should reduce jailing costs is to take BOP prison contracts and bid them out for fulfillment in the Third World. It’s a simple question of economics: they can build and staff prisons more cheaply in Thailand, than we can in Kansas. There would be minimal US staffing–say each prison would have a few BOP on-site monitors to verify that minimal Constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment were satisfied. Beyond that, everything else would be defined by the RFP and left to the Thai contractors to implement. About the only negative I can forsee to this system would be the unemployment of domestic prison workers; we might be able to mitigate this by making a two track prison system–foreign exile for all serious criminals, with domestic prisons being reserved for white collar offenders, petty misdemeanors, etc. (Obviously, the high value prisoners like drug lords and terrorists would still have to be incarcerated domestically.) And the focus of domestic prisons could be changed from incarceration to job training, reform, substance abuse, etc.
11 Mar 2008 at 8:23 pm
Monkey, one problem with prisoners is that they are estranged from societal forces that would help them re-integrate into society as productive, as opposed to destructive, members. The farther from family contacts a prisoner is incarcerated, the more isolated from that key social contact he becomes, the more alienated he is likely to be from society upon release. Shipping prisoners to Thailand–or even to Mexico–is likely to exacerbate an already difficult problem.
11 Mar 2008 at 8:23 pm
There are too many people in prison in this country. We confine more people per capita than any country in the world. We need more fines, corporal punishments and technological means to confine people (e.g., GPS anklets with police alarms). Imprisonment is an old liberal idea that is played out.
11 Mar 2008 at 10:51 pm
I’m all for the reintroduction of the stocks and dunkings, but I like jails also, especially when they keep criminals separated from me and my family.
13 Mar 2008 at 1:45 pm
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,337408,00.html
This report about Eve Carson’s killers, who were both on parole, makes me think we need a lot more prisons.
13 Mar 2008 at 1:58 pm
It’s sickening. Something like 90% of killers have a prior record. This is why I laugh when I hear people talk about the shame of “warehousing” prisoners. Obviously, it would be nice if we could easily figure out who was dangerous and who was not, but since they broke the law, I’d just as soon lock them up until they’re old and more harmless rather than take chances when they’re at the high water mark of killing, the age 18-30. Also, look at these guys, their parole should be revoked simply for their stupid, thuggish, anti-social appearance and demeanor. Is there any doubt these two would re-offend?
13 Mar 2008 at 2:31 pm
In the Middle Ages there were very strict dress codes based on profession and hierarchy. Nowadays we dismiss them as oppressive and laugh at them as nonsensical. While I am not advocating the reinstitution of society-wide dress codes, I do think we’ve certainly lost a very valuable tool in not being able to openly judge people by the clothes they choose to wear without being accused of prejudice or some such.
Of course, for people whose lives are on the line, they do exercise prejudice based on clothing. That’s why cab drivers are so often accused of racism. The reality is that they are much likelier to pick up a clean cut black guy in a suit than a white guy dressed like a gang-banger.
13 Mar 2008 at 8:16 pm
The system is irrational. Most criminals can be identified at a young age as dangerous and confined through their youths when their criminal potential is highest. Wasting jail space for the relatively non-dangerous leaves insufficient room for these types. Of course, those who have committed heinous crimes ought to be executed, not jailed (Miss Carson’s murderers being a case in point). They won’t be.
13 Mar 2008 at 8:55 pm
Not only should they be executed, they should be executed swiftly within a year of their offense. It’s crazy how long these cases drag on; distant historical events are being avenged when people are executed, often 15-20 years after they stole life from the innocent.
The death penalty should be expanded to a much higher percentage of homicides and rapes, maybe 75%, with mercy being allowed in more unusual cases where youth and other factors call for mitigation.
Incapacitation of the dangerous should be the number one priority of our system, then justice, then rehabilitation, and if we need to put twice as many people in prison to incapacitate the dangerous, so be it. I believe there is a spillover effect from harsh drug laws that target gun-toting dealers and crack possession that is reducing violence and explains the recent drop in violent crime.
The mandatory minimums are catching the scum bags in a comparatively large net. Sure some harmless mules are caught up, but no one makes anyone break the law. It’s more an issue of inefficiency that injustice.
13 Mar 2008 at 10:54 pm
“The death penalty should be expanded to a much higher percentage of homicides and rapes, maybe 75%, with mercy being allowed in more unusual cases where youth and other factors call for mitigation.”
I share your gut-level instinct that those who would impose such a vicious violation as rape on another generally deserve the ultimate penalty, but we should worry that expanding the number of death-penalty offenses will lead to more rapists simply killing their victims. I don’t know what the deterrent effect of the harsher penalty would be compared to that penalty’s aggravating effect — eliminating the witness to your death-penalty crime — but it’s something we need to know more about before we endorse these sorts of things.
13 Mar 2008 at 11:06 pm
You raise a good point. I understand certain kidnappers facing life under the Lindbergh law have made this calculation actually.
14 Mar 2008 at 3:36 pm
The only thing that surprises me about the Chapel Hill murder is that the Duke Lacrosse team hasn’t been implicated . . . .so far.