Prison reform has emerged in recent years as a trendy
issue based on the idea that our corrections facilities are filled with
non-violent drug offenders who could become productive members of society if
they were released.
Revamping the nation’s approach toward incarceration is
the issue that brought together liberal Eric Holder and libertarian Rand Paul.
Those who seek to reverse the United States’ highest-in-the-world incarceration
rates have recently seen Hillary Clinton jump on the bandwagon.
George W. Bush and a moderate Republican, tries to put the brakes on this trend
in his new piece for The Atlantic, “Can America Have Fewer Prisons Without More Crime?”
Frum describes the ups and downs of America’s crime rate
over the past 50 years and he notes that none of the experts have devised
a definitive explanation why criminal behavior dropped dramatically from 1991-2015.
Without a full understand of the dynamics, he argues,
policymakers should move cautiously in seeking criminal justice reforms. They
should also fully comprehend the realities of our state/federal prison system.
already declining, down
from a peak in 2007. The majority of people in state prison, more than 53
percent, have been convicted of a violent crime: murder, rape, or robbery. Only
about 3.7 percent of the state prison population has been sent there for drug
possession alone. (In the much smaller federal system, drug offenses loom
larger—but federal drug prisoners are overwhelmingly professional drug dealers,
not casual possessors.)
and keeping them there is a harsh, crude, and expensive way to protect society
from them. But the suggestion that less prison would leave society no less safe
is dangerously glib. The last time the political pendulum swung away from
incarceration—in the liberal decade from 1960 to 1970, the total number of
prisoners dropped
outright, and much more in relation to population—the country got in return the
most serious crime wave since Prohibition.”
