The Prosecutors’ Prison State Crime rates in the U.S. continue to decrease, yet we have higher incarceration rates than Russia or Cuba. So much for the land of the free. Edward P. Stringham reviews “Locked In” by John F. Pfaff.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-prosecutors-prison-state-1489356145
Imagine if a business did not have to worry about convincing paying customers to choose its product and could stick non-customers with the bill. Bureaucracies like the Postal Service, Amtrak and the Department of Veteran Affairs have that luxury. But imagine further that the enterprise could force its services on users whether they like it or not. Law enforcement is one of the few American entities that enjoys this privilege. The U.S. now has twice as many prosecutors as it did in the 1970s—and each one now sends more than twice as many people to prison as he or she did in that period.
In the extremely important book, “Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform,” John F. Pfaff analyzes why America incarcerates more people than ever even as crime rates continue to fall. State and federal prisons jailed 200,000 Americans in the early 1970s; today they hold more than 1.5 million people. Another 700,000 are locked up in local jails. The U.S. now has higher incarceration rates than Russia or Cuba.
Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration—and How to Achieve Real Reform
Feb 7, 2017
Mr. Pfaff, a Fordham law professor and economist, argues that the American criminal justice system defines too many offenses as deserving of jail time and that prisons often act as a revolving door. He likens incarceration to radiation treatment: Yes, it targets the disease, but it also causes a tremendous amount of collateral damage.
A 2012 Pew Survey found that 69% of Americans oppose the fact that our government jails nearly 1 out of every 100 citizens—and to read “Locked In” it’s no wonder that number is so high. For starters, although there have long been claims that higher incarceration rates are tied to the decrease in crime, Mr. Pfaff cites multiple studies showing that, at best, the effect is minuscule. Criminals who commit crimes of passion do not really weigh the prospect of having to serve time. Most criminals tend to get less violent with age, so overlong prison sentences have little effect on safety.
Incarceration for what most people consider non-crimes can have unintended consequences. When the U.S. Justice Department investigated the police in Ferguson, Mo., following the shooting death of Michael Brown by an officer in August 2014, they discovered that the city’s cops routinely threatened to jail citizens for charges as insubstantial as having an overgrown lawn. Law enforcement was used as a means of increasing revenue for city coffers through ticketing and forfeitures. The result was a severely strained relationship between the public and the police that was primed to explode. CONTINUE AT SITE
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