Vocaboly.com

[Ray Woodcock]

[From New York Times at
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/13/opinion/13SAT1.html?th]

Creating the Next Crime Wave

Published: March 13, 2004


..... The United States has the largest, most expensive and
fastest-growing prison system in the world, and it may be
unsustainable over the long run. Faced with a national price tag for
corrections that exceeds $50 billion per year, states are being forced
to re-evaluate the stiff sentencing policies that drove up the prison
population to more than 2 million, from 200,000 three decades ago. ...

These sentencing changes would have been politically impossible 20
years ago, when the country was racked by a crack-inspired crime wave.
The states responded with stiff sentences for certain crimes. Then,
over the last decade, national crime rates fell sharply. Prosecutors
and the police rushed to take credit, arguing that crime had gone down
because criminals had been locked up.

The problem with this explanation is that crime went down just as much
in states that did not adopt tough new policing and sentencing
strategies as in states that embraced them. The emerging consensus is
that mass incarceration accounts for only a fraction of the drop in
violent crime. The strong economy of the 1990's clearly played a role,
as did demographic factors — and the ending of the crack epidemic,
aided by teenagers who shunned the drug after seeing parents and older
siblings destroyed.

If society hopes to maintain that welcome drop in crime, whatever its
causes, it must now confront the fact that mass imprisonment creates a
huge population of ex-convicts. About 600,000 hit the streets each
year with no skills, no place to live and few family connections [but
with lots of education about how to commit crimes, acquired during
their time in lockup]. These former offenders are almost always ruled
out of consideration for decent jobs and are further marginalized by
laws that bar them from getting student loans ....

* * * * *

[To those self-righteous individuals who think it is good to hit
people as hard as possible when they make a mistake, I quote Solomon:
"A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger."
(Proverbs 15:1). In other words, treat people like dogs and you'll
get -- (guess what?).

The nation's laws are riddled with excuses to retaliate against
people. This certainly includes the realm of student loans. For
several decades now, there has been a one-eyed tendency to treat those
loans as a favor from government to student. Open the other eye, and
you see that, hey, those loans do us all a favor. Make a $5,000 loan,
and you may persuade someone to spend a year in college instead of
roaming the streets or (even worse) being a telemarketer.

A few years back, there was a lot of righteous indignation about the
idea that prisoners had access to various amenities that crime-free
but poor citizens could not afford. Good point! Make life better for
the poor! But taking training opportunities away from convicts and
ex-convicts -- well, what positive outcome is that going to achieve?]