Glenn Reynolds is probably one of the most valuable resources in the Blogsphere…but every now and again he checks out and comes up with something loony. We should expect it since he is after all a member of a class of people whose grip on reality sometimes slips…alot. Witness this ”piece” that Glenn points us to this morning.  Glenn bestows the coveted “read the whole thing” link to a piece so badly argued that I will be forever questioning the abilities of lawyers coming from the University of Penn.
Read the whole thing. Including this: “Criminal justice works badly when the voters whose preferences govern the system are not the voters who feel the effects of crime and punishment most directly.”
WTF??? Glenn have you perused any crime statistics lately?
So then I hurry on over to the site to see such wisdom displayed in all of its glory and lo and behold it’s MORE law professors this time from the University of Pennsylvania. There I am confronted by this bit of staggering naivete.
No doubt one might draw many lessons from this sad story. Here’s mine: Criminal justice works badly when the voters whose preferences govern the system are not the voters who feel the effects of crime and punishment most directly. Over the last thirty-five years, our justice system has been governed primarily by the votes of suburban and small-town whites. But crime and punishment alike are heavily concentrated in poor city neighborhoods, and especially in black neighborhoods. Democracy works best when those making the relevant choices bear the cost of those choices. The politics of crime in the United States doesn’t meet that standard: choices are made by some, and costs are borne by others. No wonder those costs are so staggeringly high. Who is Responsible for America’s Swollen Prison Population?–Stuntz (Less than the Least) 0
Consider that nationwide Blacks are 6 times more likely than Whites to be the victims of murder. They are 7 times more likely Whites to commit murder, if you are skeptical of those figures see this Justice Department page 3. In the City of New York blacks account for 27% of the population and yet they account for around 50% of victims of murder.
Let that sink in for a moment…
Blacks are 6 times more likely to be murdered than whites are. Yes you read that right. I know if I were black that I would be pretty upset that my children were facing such daunting odds. Hell I might just want to have MORE folks jailed. Assuming that these “law professors” know about these statistics one is left wondering how they arrive at this.
But I’m pretty sure one common answer—we have a huge, disproportionately black prison population primarily because of the policy choices made by conservative Republicans like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush—is wrong. The political right plainly contributed, and contributed a lot, to the generation-long run-up in our prison population. But the political left probably contributed even more.
So jailing folks is the wrong answer when those folks make bad choices. Are these “law professors” hinting that we should have some sort of quotas in place for criminals incarcerated? In another paragraph these “law professors” state that our incarceration rate is much higher than Europe’s.
As of 2001 (America’s prison population has grown since then), the average incarceration rate in EU countries was 87 per 100,000 population. In the U.S., the comparable figure was nearly 700. (Link here) The black incarceration rate is several times higher than that.
I guess they didn’t see fit to include that violent crime is exploding in Europe right now . From Useful Fools :
[Warning: this article is politically incorrect. If you are likely to be offended by this, you need to read it!]
Here are Interpol 2001 crime statistics (rate per 100,000):
- 4161 - US
- 7736 - Germany
- 6941 - France
- 9927 - England and Wales
Thus the US has a substantially lower crime rate than the major European countries!
Here are the Interpol 1995 crime statistics (rate per 100,000):
- 5278 - US
- 8179 - Germany
- 6316 - France
- 7206 - England & Wales
Hence the trend in the US is towards a lower crime rate, while the trend in Europe (except Germany) is towards an increasing crime rate.
Hey I wonder why crime is increasing in Europe? Could it be that while the population was relatively homogenous and stable crime was not a problem and so incarceration statistics were low. Then when Europeans decided that they needed a labor force for all those nasty jobs they didn’t want to do they imported all those folks from the Third World violence crept up?Â
Swedish girls are paying the price right now for the same sort of thinking that these Univ of Penn State professors display.
Swedish girls Jenny and Linda were on their way to a party on New Year?s Eve when they were assaulted, raped and beaten half to death by four Somali immigrants. Sweden?s largest newspaper has presented the perpetrators as ?two men from Sweden, one from Finland and one from Somalia?, a testimony as to how bad the informal censorship is in stories related to immigration in Sweden. Similar incidents are reported with shocking frequency, to the point where some observers fear that law and order is completely breaking down in the country . The number of rape charges in Sweden 0 has tripled in just above twenty years . Rape cases involving children under the age of 15 are six - 6 - times as common today as they were a generation ago. Most other kinds of violent crime have rapidly increased, to o. Instability is spreading to most urban and suburban areas.
Anyway seems like a walk around town for these sheltered “law professors” is in order. I would suggest walking around New Orleans for a while. That is bound to be a barrel of fun.
Instead of quotas for our prisons why don’t we in no particular order.
- Not jail folks for drug charges.  We are sending these hapless folks to prison where they are raped, dehumanized and trained for a life of crime, seems like a bad idea.
- End the incentives that started with LBJ’s great society that have driven black families to extinction.
- Stop releasing violent criminals. Most of the crime is committed by those we release from prison…solution keep them in.
- Truly reform the prison system make it punishment not torture. End the rule of gangs inside of prisons.
Course that is a lot harder than just letting criminals go based on their voting blocs.
Technorati Tags: crime , willie horton , black crime , immigrant crime , rape sweden
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