I stole the title or this post from an essay by Mark A.R. Kleinman, in the journal Democracy, from which I pull this quote:
“Conservatives, who want to fight crime by hurting people who commit it, have a natural rhetorical advantage over liberals, whose tendency is to fight crime by helping those who have committed it or might do so.”
Mark A.R. Kleiman*
* Democracy. 28. 2013
I'm going to present a series of posts, based on a talk I gave recently. As you must know, the perception is widespread that crime in the U.S. has been increasing, that it constitutes a crisis, and that it's all the fault of bleeding heart liberals. None of this is actually true, but nowadays that doesn't matter. I'll discuss the reality of crime in the U.S., including statistics, the nature of the problem, and what we ought to do about it. Here are my next two slides:
It probably won't surprise you that I'm somewhat more sympathetic to the first set of propositions than I am to the second, but they both need some criticizing. We'll embark on that journey next.
2 comments:
Member of the choir here:
Our state is planning to build a new prison for 1,500 inmates at a projected cost of about $400,000,000. That's more than $250K per bed. In our state 3 beds would pay for a very nice 3 bedroom house. Last I heard incarceration here cost the state $40K per inmate per year. Remarkable that Republicans are willing to spend that much on the "unworthy".
If that money were spent on improving the environment for at-risk kids much of that outlay could be eliminated. Not to mention the crimes that put inmates there not being committed, the police and justice resources not expended, the public perception of danger not created ... plus, the taxes and other contributions to society generated by a law abiding citizen. A case could be made that there are more economical ways to reduce crime. It makes me wonder about the financial argument for building that prison.
i'm in the choir too, Chucky. It's all about short-term profit and racism, I guess. Some company will get paid a hell of a lot of money to build that prison. And then once it's built, we can discriminate against brown and poor people and throw them in there.
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