Future NYT Supreme Court Correspondent Shows His True Colors in Piece About Incarceration Rates
Adam Liptak has never been to Compton.
I know this because if he had been to Compton, he would have taken a different approach to his recent piece criticizing America’s high incarceration rate. If he came face to face with the devastation that violent crime has caused Compton and surrounding communities, he wouldn’t be so appalled by the fact that we’re doing our level best to lock up the people who are robbing and murdering people.
Liptak, you may recall, is the New York Times legal reporter who has been chosen to replace Linda Greenhouse as the paper’s Supreme Court correspondent. Regular readers of this blog will remember Liptak as the author of a piece that gravely misstated the law regarding peremptory challenges in jury selection. Ever since I read that piece, I knew that I would read all future Liptak pieces with a heavy measure of suspicion. That decision was only reinforced by Liptak’s piece bemoaning the fact that America puts a lot of criminals in prison.
Liptak’s piece was brought to my attention by an angry reader on April 23, the day it appeared on the front page of the New York Times. I haven’t blogged it until today because I’ve been busy 24/7 working to add to America’s prison population.
Liptak’s piece puts criticism of America front and center:
The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners.
Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations.
No, Adam Liptak, our main problem is that we are a violent society.
I know you’re used to people telling you that the prisons are filled mostly with first-time drug users and low-level property criminals. But the facts tell a different story. Here is a chart from the U.S. Department of Justice showing that over half of state prisoners in this country are incarcerated for violent offenses like “murder, negligent and nonnegligent manslaughter, rape, sexual assault, robbery, assault, extortion, intimidation, criminal endangerment, and other violent offenses.”
Now, an argument could be made that, as to the nearly half of crimes that fall into other categories (property crime, drug crime, etc.), we should be incarcerating fewer prisoners. That argument has less force when you start looking at the actual people who are serving these sentences. In virtually all cases, their records are lengthy, sometimes containing violent offenses in their past. The drug seller may have a record including felony assaults. The guy serving 32 months for car theft may have a carjacking on his record within the last ten years.
And there are almost no pure users in prison. Here in California, the vast majority of state prisoners incarcerated for simple possession are in prison because, within the last five years, they have a serious or violent felony on their record — crimes like arson, kidnapping, and rape. Therefore, they don’t qualify for the Proposition 36 drug treatment program, as virtually all other defendants with possession cases do.
So yeah, you could set free the property or drug criminals, but in many cases you’d be setting free potentially violent people. But even if you didn’t care and you kicked every last one of them out of prison, you’d still be left with over 600,000 state prisoners in prison for violent crimes. That would still be a high number compared to other countries.
That doesn’t mean we have an incarceration problem. We have a violent crime problem.
Exactly which violent criminals should we not be incarcerating?
Liptak games the numbers by mushing together statistics and facts about jail inmates and prison inmates. There is a difference.
Jails house people serving short sentences. In virtually all cases, jail inmates are either awaiting trial on any level of crime, or serving a sentence of one year or less. Prisons, by contrast, house people serving sentences of more than one year. In California, this could range from 16 months (again, they actually serve only half) to life, depending on the offense.
Throughout, Liptak mushes the two together when talking about the aggregate numbers (“The United States has, for instance, 2.3 million criminals behind bars“). But at other times he speaks as though all these numbers represent prisoners, as when he says that “Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries.”
Well, even here, crimes like writing bad checks and using drugs are typically dealt with by imposing local jail time. Here in Los Angeles, for example, first-time and even second-time shoplifters or bad-check writers will serve only a few days in jail. First-time PCP sellers will generally serve about 90 days (180 days at half-time). (Note that I said “sellers” — first-time PCP users will get a drug treatment program and no incarceration, under the state’s Proposition 36.) This is not what most people think of when they talk about the “horror” (as one of Liptak’s experts terms it) of American incarceration rates.
Prison is different.
Liptak continues:
Criminologists and legal scholars in other industrialized nations say they are mystified and appalled by the number and length of American prison sentences.
Guess what, Adam Liptak? I’m “mystified and appalled” by the number and length of European prison sentences — specifically, the mystifying and appallingly short sentences that too often result in cases of clear, premeditated murder.
For example, in Germany, activists bombed an American military base and killed a U.S. soldier, and received a “life” sentence. By August of last year, two had been paroled after serving only 21 years. In the Netherlands, Volkert Van der Graaf confessed to assassinating politician Pim Fortuyn and was sentenced to all of 18 years.
And I could go on.
I believe many Americans are also “mystified and appalled” by the leniency of these European sentences for premeditated murder. But somehow, Adam Liptak gives no prominence to their views.
Liptak’s article is filled with outrageous statements, but I don’t have the rest of the weekend to respond to them all, so I’ll document two. First, Liptak tells us that America is the worst offender in the world when it comes to incarcerating people — but his proof contains an odd parenthetical caveat:
China, which is four times more populous than the United States, is a distant second, with 1.6 million people in prison. (That number excludes hundreds of thousands of people held in administrative detention, most of them in China’s extrajudicial system of re-education through labor, which often singles out political activists who have not committed crimes.)
So if you put aside the inconvenient fact that China sentences hundreds of thousands of people to forced labor, without judicial due process, as punishment for political dissent — if you ignore that minor detail, so minor it really should be placed inside parentheses, because really, what does it have to do with whether China is inappropriately punitive? — if you ignore that, then America is the worst country in the world!!!
Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?
Next, Liptak tells us that part of America’s problem is that we lack a social safety net:
Criminologists and legal experts here and abroad point to a tangle of factors to explain America’s extraordinary incarceration rate: higher levels of violent crime, harsher sentencing laws, a legacy of racial turmoil, a special fervor in combating illegal drugs, the American temperament, and the lack of a social safety net.
Huh?
Here in the United States, our federal social programs include food stamps, SSI, unemployment insurance, the Earned Income Tax Credit, school meals programs, low-income housing assistance, child-care assistance, and various other programs, adding up to 9% of the federal budget, or over $250 billion per year. If you toss in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, we’re now looking at about half the federal budget, or over $1.3 trillion.
Just imagine how expensive things would be if we did have a safety net!
Remember the guy I wrote about in March who makes a living off of unemployment? He said: “I’ve been on unemployment three times in the past six years. Each time was better than the last, and each time I stayed on until the last cent was exhausted. I didn’t even try to get a job; it was a paid vacation.” I bet he’d be surprised to learn that we lack a social safety net!
But I digress.
Liptak does provide some facts to give the appearance of balance, but these facts are, in most cases, buried. We have to read through almost all the quotes given above, and more — all tirades about how barbaric and out of kilter our penal system is — before Liptak tells us that our high incarceration rate has unquestionably reduced crime. We then get another nine paragraphs of more ranting about the “horror” of American incarceration before Liptak says — in a quote that I cannot prove appeared inside parentheses in the first draft — “The nation’s relatively high violent crime rate, partly driven by the much easier availability of guns here, helps explain the number of people in American prisons.”
That’s the 20th paragraph of the article. Don’t you think that’s kind of important?
Yet that nugget comes after quotes from three experts who say that “contemporary America is viewed with horror” and describe the United States as “a rogue state, a country that has made a decision not to follow what is a normal Western approach.”
The bottom line is that Liptak, our future New York Times Supreme Court correspondent, has written a piece that drips with sympathy for the views of Europeans who think we’re being far too harsh, while burying deep in the article (or in some cases omitting entirely) the facts that would provide a more balanced perspective.
I can’t wait to read his articles on the Supreme Court.
Well, after touching all of the Liberal benchmarks that define a despotic Amerika, he has produced another piece of typical NYT drek.
It is amusing to listen to Liptak and others complain about the incarceration rate in the U.S., but offer no condemnation of countries that deal with some of their most serious problems extra-judicially – summary execution prior to any entry into the judicial system comes to mind.
Now, the big question will be:
How long will he have a platform in NY?
The latest circulation numbers don’t reflect positively on the health of the paper he scribes for.
How long can the Sulzberger’s accommodate the red-ink, and hold-off the outside share-holders?
Patterico, I hope your attempt to increase CA’s prison population has been going well?
Another Drew (8018ee) — 5/3/2008 @ 12:11 pmWe are all glad to see you re-engage your mind-less robots.
DRJ has been great in your absence; but, she can be too nice to some of the more obstreperous among us.
If you graph prison (not jail) rates vs. violent crime over virtually any period of time, you’ll see a clear inverse relationship.
More prison=less crime.
Also note that some countries have rather lower prison rates because of the summary execution of dissidents. Summary execution solves prison rates well.
I’m all for alternatives that work. I’m one of a small minority of prosecutors that does not want to punish criminals for punishment’s sake – punishment should deter or protect or both.
But most of the alternatives to custody simply don’t work. Prop. 36 doesn’t work. (Drug court programs with flash incarceration and rapid consequences work enough that they are viable; Prop 36 doesn’t have enough of a quick hammer to work.)
Counseling (“Now, Bobby, no stabbing 4-year-olds. No! Don’t!”) doesn’t work for these folks. The people whose lives you sacrifice for letting out the bad folks are valuable to society.
Innocent deaths are the consequence of soft sentencing. Prison is the best we have. If we get something better that works, bring it on.
–JRM
JRM (355c21) — 5/3/2008 @ 12:18 pm“No, Adam Liptak, our main problem is that we are a violent society.”
Now thats putting criticism of america front and center
stef (b7ee98) — 5/3/2008 @ 12:35 pmPunishments need to be punitive to discourage amoral or immoral people from causing harm to others (either their person or property). If the punishment isn’t severe enough or if the laws aren’t being inforced, then crime will increase to an intolerable level where the only people remaining will be criminals or people that cannot escape the criminal area.
I had the misfortune of having my car vandalized 2 nights ago when at least one person (probably more) decided that their entertainment and my cheap navigation system was worth more than the time they could possibly do in jail or the hardship of their victims. Now I have to buy a new car window and replace my navigation system.
These liberal utopias are just wonderful, aren’t they… (NJ resident)
NJRob (c36902) — 5/3/2008 @ 12:55 pmNJRob…
Another Drew (8018ee) — 5/3/2008 @ 12:59 pmYour sarcasm would have been complete if you had self-identified as a (Garden State resident).
We are not a violent society, we simply have a 50% voter base that is tolerant of violent criminals.
If we lived in a “horrific” repressive society, we would cut off hands for theft, put people in woodchippers as a sport, have them “disappear” after they commit property damage/vandalism, send them to “re-education camps” if they sell drugs.
We don’t do that. We make sure they have attorneys, we give them second, third and more chances to rehabilitate and we allow mitigating circumstances to come in as evidence for shorter or lighter sentences upon conviction.
At least a part of the problem is not that society is violent, but that it allows…even encourages people to not be invested in its well being as an institution. We allow people who don’t live here, to act as if they do.
We allow people to come here, who like the money and benefits for their individual good but are completely disconnected from contributing to the greater good of the country. They really…could care less about the country, except for what it can do for them.
When nearly the entirety of the hard leftist spectrum stand AGAINST the country at nearly every turn, they live here in name only. They are Timeshare Americans. They are no more invested in the good of the country than are people who come to live here, but every other act of patriotism is to a different country.
cfbleachers (4040c7) — 5/3/2008 @ 1:41 pmAnother Drew,
I probably should’ve mentioned myself as a Garden State Resident, but when I think of that term I think of the peace and tranquility I feel when I visit local parks. Not much tranquility coming out of me lately due to my expenses suddenly becoming more burdensome due to these “innocent youths” that should be a few miles south of me having a close view of the Rahway State Pen walls.
NJRob (d671ab) — 5/3/2008 @ 3:20 pmPatterico: to be fair, if you add in the people China sentences to forced labor, and then take the number of prisoners as a percentage of population, the US still incarcerates a larger percentage.
NJRob: many other industrialized countries manage to maintain a low crime rate without having punitive punishments. Your statement that “punishments need to be punitive to discourage amoral or immoral people from causing harm” can only be categorically true if you assert that the countries in question have an abnormally low number of amoral or immoral people, which is unlikely.
And yet it’s fairly evident that, say, Scandinavian-style penalty systems simply don’t work in the United States; why this is so would be an interesting question to have answered.
CFBleachers: it’s fairly clear from looking at the statistics of industrialized nations that we have a higher violent crime *rate* than most, if not all, other industrialized nations. I’ve yet to hear a good explanation of why that is so.
aphrael (db0b5a) — 5/3/2008 @ 3:39 pmI don’t know that we are truly a violent society. We are a free, liberal (small “l”), and, most of all, mobile society. We put chains on peoples’ bodies and their bodies behind bars after they have committed a crime. The societies Mr. Liptak looks up to imprison peoples’ minds beginning at birth.
I do, however, wish I had written Mr. Liptak’s article because I believe that at any one time we have both too many and not enough people in prison.
We do, often, incarcerate people for too long which results in not incarcerating the next criminal long enough because there is no space for him. And the money that we spend on guarding three maximum security prisoners could pay for one police officers on the street corner to prevent hundreds of crimes.
nk (1e7806) — 5/3/2008 @ 3:59 pmAphrael, in general we have a more diverse population than the “industrialized” nations we are compared to.
SPQR (26be8b) — 5/3/2008 @ 4:13 pmMore specifically, our “diversity” includes large populations whose old countries are far more violent than ours. For all the talk about Americans being so damned violent, can anyone produce a single ethnicity X for whom one can honestly say that X-Americans are significantly more crime- or violence-prone than the general population of X-Land?
Xrlq (62cad4) — 5/3/2008 @ 4:31 pm“For all the talk about Americans being so damned violent, can anyone produce a single ethnicity X for whom one can honestly say that X-Americans are significantly more crime- or violence-prone than the general population of X-Land?”
So if white america had more violence than white europeans, that would fit your definition?
stef (5e2e3a) — 5/3/2008 @ 4:43 pmEven in your world stef, ‘white europe’ isn’t really a ‘x-land’ is it? (and white america isn’t a x-Americans)
Lord Nazh (899dce) — 5/3/2008 @ 5:09 pm“For all the talk about Americans being so damned violent, can anyone produce a single ethnicity X for whom one can honestly say that X-Americans are significantly more crime- or violence-prone than the general population of X-Land?”
So if white america had more violence than white europeans, that would fit your definition?
“For all the talk about Americans being so damned violent, can anyone produce a single ethnicity X for whom one can honestly say that X-Americans are significantly more crime- or violence-prone than the general population of X-Land?”
Why is it that peanut butter and jelly sandwiches always fall peanut butter and jelly side down?
nk (1e7806) — 5/3/2008 @ 5:11 pmXrlq, I don’t have it handy but I think Dave Kopel did such a comparison in one of his books. Don’t recall all of the comparisons but one that I found interesting compared Japanese with Americans of Japanese ancestry with the result being a lower crime and violence rate among Americans of Japanese ancestry.
SPQR (26be8b) — 5/3/2008 @ 5:12 pm“Even in your world stef, ‘white europe’ isn’t really a ‘x-land’ is it? (and white america isn’t a x-Americans)”
Just checking if he wants to go country by country, and also if he wants to exclude non-original peoples from those countries. So european americans wouldn’t be compared to recent immigrants to europe, Irish americans wouldn’t be compared to polish immigrants to ireland, etc…
“and white america isn’t a x-Americans)”
European-americans?
stef (f35d9f) — 5/3/2008 @ 5:26 pmSomeone else can dig up the exact figures for this assertion.
We USAians murder more people at a rate per 100,000 of population, with our hands and feet (so-called personal weapons) than Great Britain does with ALL weapons.
The same is true of edged weapons (knives, axes, saws, ….
I don’t think that the problem is [i]due to[/i] gun availability, easy or not.
htom (412a17) — 5/3/2008 @ 5:36 pmJust checking if he wants to go country by country
I do but I have no special need to. Will you do it for me stef? Go ahead, prove Xrlq wrong. We will all wait for your research.
nk (1e7806) — 5/3/2008 @ 5:39 pmSPQR, fair point. That said, why the scare quotes around industrialized? It’s a long-established term whose meaning is fairly well understood, and it’s certainly more useful to compare the US against other industrialized countries than against non-industrialized ones.
XRLQ, equally fair point about the rates of violence in the countries of origin of many immigrants.
HTOM, certainly it’s not due to gun availability. It’s probably due to a cultural difference, although as SPQR and XRLQ point out, our culture is a bit too heterogeneous to be able to make the comparisons directly.
aphrael (db0b5a) — 5/3/2008 @ 5:41 pmOnly related to this post tangentially, but in as much as it involves a Supreme Court reporter–
Fans of Antonin Scalia please take note that he is this week’s guest on the Tim Russert Show (MSNBC). I missed the first ten minutes or so because of the Kentucky Derby. Nothing he was said was instantly quotable (except for a quote from his father) but most of it was interesting. The show repeats at least twice on Sunday (Noon and 6PM EDT) and possibly again tonight (Saturday).
kishnevi (a117ab) — 5/3/2008 @ 5:56 pmNot to be snarky here, nk, you know I respect you. But is there a positive correlation between the number of police officers on the street and crime prevention? If so, is there a saturation point, where additional officers have relatively little effect? Finally, if there is a positive correlation, is it greater or less than the effect of increased incarceration rates?
Steverino (6772c8) — 5/3/2008 @ 6:14 pmSteverino–there’s at least anecdotal evidence, such as Guiliani’s efforts in NYC. Generally, whenever the number of officers on patrol goes up, the number of crimes committed seems to go down. But I don’t remember seeing any mention of studies to confirm or deny that.
kishnevi (a117ab) — 5/3/2008 @ 6:21 pmI note that unlike the socialist heavens of France and Sweden as two examples, the US doesn’t have no go zones where the police fear entering violence-prone Muslim enclaves. Naturally the msm didn’t bother talking about the times a few years back where hundreds of French cities had Moooslim yoots burning cars and attacking police. Can you imagine the outcry if the same happened here under the evil Bushitler? The bogus Katrina horrors got an excess of attention and the feds get far more blame than the actually more culpable mayor and governor. And then again there were no liberal outcries about 100,000 elderly French citizens croaking in a summer heat wave while many other cheese eating surrender monkeys vacationed on the Riviera. Portable ac units are soooo expensive, eh?
madmax333 (e2888a) — 5/3/2008 @ 6:40 pmWhat would crime recidivism be like if we actually executed killers on a timely basis or had rules for jails and prisons more in line with that sheriff in Arizona. ..baloney sammies, no weights, very little of TV and tents in the southwest heat? Boo hoo.
I note that Obamalamadingdong favors a more compassionate sentencing structure for criminals. Perhaps good citizens like Rezko, Ayers and Dohrn should be given even better status than currently favored. Oh yes, Rezko may cop a plea.
Saturation and high visibility is actual police practice. They called it the “watchman model” in my long ago criminology classes. As compared to the “service model” (Mayberry) or the “enforcement model” (meter maids?). Chicago has all three. Maybe now four. They have always had saturation cars with four officers to be at schools letting out, ball games and other such events. In the last week, with about forty killings, they have SWAT teams out and highly visible.
In my opinion, it’s a more valid theory of crime prevention than deterrence. Criminals are creatures of momentary opportunity. They don’t think ahead to the prison that awaits them. And they are mostly punks who will be scared off by the color blue.
nk (1e7806) — 5/3/2008 @ 6:43 pmSPQR: I think the Kopel work you are thinking of is: The Samurai, the Mountie, and the Cowboy: Should America Adopt the Gun Controls of Other Democracies.
kishnevi:
Sometimes it’s difficult to keep straight what is anecdotal and what assertions have some statistical foundation, but always the best place to start is Bureau of Justice Statistics. They generally have what skinny there is.
EW1(SG) (84e813) — 5/3/2008 @ 7:24 pmStef:
Close, but “White Europe” is not a single culture. So rather than comparing “white America” to “white Europeans,” try comparing Portuguese Americans to the Portuguese, Spanish Americans to Spaniards, and so on.
Xrlq (62cad4) — 5/3/2008 @ 7:33 pmEW1(SG) thanks for the tip. Will report back if I find anything usable.
kishnevi (2dbd61) — 5/3/2008 @ 7:46 pm#27 kishnevi:
There is lots of useful stuff there: the problem is finding it, because the data isn’t intuitively organized or presented.
EW1(SG) (84e813) — 5/3/2008 @ 8:08 pmA quick look doesn’t show anything that looks directly related to number of police officers per crime or anything like that, but there is this relating to recividism, which suggests that imprisonment is not too great at deterring crime, but apparently it’s better at deterring sex offenders than non sex offenders.
# Of the 272,111 persons released from prisons in 15 States in 1994, an estimated 67.5% were rearrested for a felony or serious misdemeanor within 3 years, 46.9% were reconvicted, and 25.4% resentenced to prison for a new crime.
# The 272,111 offenders discharged in 1994 accounted for nearly 4,877,000 arrest charges over their recorded careers.
# Within 3 years of release, 2.5% of released rapists were rearrested for another rape, and 1.2% of those who had served time for homicide were arrested for a new homicide.
# Sex offenders were less likely than non-sex offenders to be rearrested for any offense –– 43 percent of sex offenders versus 68 percent of non-sex offenders.
# Sex offenders were about four times more likely than non-sex offenders to be arrested for another sex crime after their discharge from prison –– 5.3 percent of sex offenders versus 1.3 percent of non-sex offenders.
Precise link here, if spam filter allows.
[The spam filter didn’t allow. Sorry. — DRJ]
kishnevi (2dbd61) — 5/3/2008 @ 8:15 pmThe last time I read the comparison, white Americans have a lower crime rate than Europeans. We have two violent minority groups that run our national crime rate, and violent crime rate, above the other countries we are compared to. However, hope is on the horizon. London, with the policies that gave us the 1974 NYC crime rate, is now three times as violent as any but the top two US cities. The UK, as a whole, is far more violent than the US. I wonder why ?
Mike K (a08d8e) — 5/3/2008 @ 8:31 pmIf restricting availability of guns reduced crime, then Washington D.C. would be the safest city in the country instead of Murder Capitol USA, and Vermont would be the most violent.
If you graph violent crime rates in California over the years, and add the points where our laws on firearms ownership were significantly tightened, you’d see a small but definite acceleration in the crime rate each time the new law is enacted.
Socratease (b97f29) — 5/3/2008 @ 9:05 pm“I wonder why ?”
I bet stef knows!
Lord Nazh (899dce) — 5/3/2008 @ 9:05 pmWe are not a violent society, we simply have a 50% voter base that is tolerant of violent criminals.
cfbleachers – That 50% you speak of, which believes in juducial activism, short sentences for child sexual offenders, abolishing the death penalty, etc., etc., unfortunately already loudly proclaims their belief that America is a police state. It’s tough to anticipate serious solutions for reducing violent crime from that side with going in attitudes such as those.
daleyrocks (906622) — 5/3/2008 @ 9:22 pmSocratease – Isn’t that something about only the criminals having guns under strict gun control or something along those lines. It took multiple Cray computers operating in parallel for the geniuses on the left to produce correlations attibuting the results to other factors.
daleyrocks (906622) — 5/3/2008 @ 9:26 pmkishnevi, nk, et al.:
I think it’s generally true that more cops means less crime. However, it’s obvious to me that it’s not a first-order function; more likely it asymptotically approaches some minimum value. Because of that, there is a point where adding another police officer won’t reduce crime “enough”.
So, the question becomes this: if it’s true that we can pay for an additional cop on the streets for the same price as incarcerating 3 offenders, does that additional cop prevent 3 crimes a year? That would depend on the size of the city, the overall crime rate, and other factors. I imagine that if it’s true in Chicago, it wouldn’t be true in St. George, UT. And even if it is true in Chicago for one officer, would it be linearly true for 100? 1000?
I don’t pretend to have any answers, just thinking out loud.
Steverino (6772c8) — 5/3/2008 @ 9:58 pm#34 daleyrocks:
Even though I think there is a definite correlation between a lawfully armed (or potentially armed) public and lowered crime rates, I don’t think anyone could have foreseen the rise in gun crime in the UK following the gun bans after Dunblane. And there were/are some confounding factors there…but nothing prepared us for the meteoric rise in violence that they’ve experienced.
EW1(SG) (84e813) — 5/3/2008 @ 10:30 pmI think some people did. DC’s murder rate tripled after their absolute handgun ban, and you can look at what happened to Jamaica after enacting laws like possession of a single round of ammo being a prison offense. No, I don’t think the majority of the change is attributable to gun laws, either, but those laws go in a package of ‘progressive’ government policies concerning crime and punishment that lead to these results.
Given a choice between putting violent people in prison or creating laws to keep everyone “safer” which amount to turning society into one big prison, I know which one I think is more “civilized”.
Socratease (b97f29) — 5/3/2008 @ 10:53 pm#37 Socratease:
Hence my reference to confounding factors. I think many of us expected a rise, just not as meteoric.
EW1(SG) (84e813) — 5/3/2008 @ 11:55 pmThe management and editors of the NYT has strongly believed the “ideals”
best summarized by “God Damn America!” for 88 years. To check my facts look at how they covered the war in the Pacific in 44 and 45. Replace the names, dates and locations with ’03 – ’08 coverage and it looks like the same folk wrote all the “news” articles.
Full disclosure of writers bias. I am a former Jarhead who killed for America 40 years ago. I ame related to former Jarhead killers and current Jarhead killers. On the rare occasion I say a prayer I thank God that there are Jarhead murders that kill bad guys so my grandkids, my kids, my wife and I can live in security and freedom. My strong bias is fully disclosed!
Rod Stanton (2f05e5) — 5/4/2008 @ 5:08 am“Close, but “White Europe” is not a single culture. So rather than comparing “white America” to “white Europeans,” try comparing Portuguese Americans to the Portuguese, Spanish Americans to Spaniards, and so on.”
I thought you meant that. But this might be hard, because of how people mix. You’d only end up getting recent immigrants. Which then could more be measuring violence among immigrants than among cultures.
stef (87fe55) — 5/4/2008 @ 8:10 amI have long wondered about the efficacy of the “detection-and-punishment” model of criminal justice that we use.
With a 25% re-incarceration rate, on a very large sample, surely it’s possible to isolate those factors that contribute most to recidivism. Perhaps a very efective crime prevention method would then be simply to refuse to release those who display high likelihood of re-offending. Must we really wait until a violent offender, released from prison, assaults, rapes or kills another innocent before deciding that they’re sufficently dangerous to deserve further incarceration?
Blerk (ef9ada) — 5/4/2008 @ 9:20 amOnly if you insist on 100% precision, which I don’t. Feel free to compare white American generally to an weighted average among the European countries that make it up, and do the same for blacks, Asians, etc. I don’t think it’s going to change the results all that much.
Xrlq (62cad4) — 5/5/2008 @ 3:47 am