Two facts about crime and sentencing dwarf everything else we have learned over the past 50 years: When we have more prison we have less crime, and when we have less prison, we have more crime.
We got something for our trouble -- a national crime wave. In the two decades after 1960, crime increased by over 300%. Whole neighborhoods in our major cities became free-fire zones, largely because of the gunplay associated with drug dealing. There were nearly 450 murders a week.
Under Ronald Reagan's Justice Department, all this changed. We embraced stern, determinate sentencing. For some serious offenses -- firearms trafficking, and drugs including heroin and meth -- Congress adopted mandatory minimums below which even the most willful or naive judge could not go. States followed suit, and the prison population swelled.
But the country got something in exchange for the reforms that made sentencing serious and honest. From the early Nineties to the present day, we have enjoyed a reduction in crime to levels not seen since the Baby Boomers were in grade school.
There are more than 4,000,000 fewer serious crimes per year in America now than there were a generation ago. Not all this is because of the increased use of prison. James Q. Wilson and others found that about a quarter of it is. Other measures, such as more police, more targeted policing, and improved private security have also contributed, but increased incarceration is a major factor. A fortune in costs to potential crime victims has been saved, and enormous human suffering averted, because of the tens of thousands of crimes incarcerated criminals did not have the chance commit.
Those backing lighter sentences say we've gone too far. I think they're captured by an odd misconception: That the health of the criminal justice system is measured, not by the crime rate, but by the incarceration rate. If you'd ask people on Main Street, what's the problem with how we handle lawbreakers, how many would say, as Eric Holder has, "We have too many people in prison for too long"?
A few, I suppose. But most would say, "We still have too much crime," and they'd be right. Even with all we've achieved, we still have more than 10,000,000 serious crimes every year. We have almost 15,000 murders, 84,000 rapes, three-quarters of a million aggravated assaults. and over 2,000,000 burglaries. According to Gallup, one in four households has been victimized by crime in just the last year.
It would be one thing if, after release, inmates led peaceable and productive lives. But that's not what happens. According to this year's Justice Department report:
"Within five years of release, 82 percent of property offenders were arrested for a new crime, compared to 77 percent of drug offenders... and 71 percent of violent offenders."
In other words, the huge majority -- three quarters -- of released criminals get back in business. What the opaque phrase "sentencing reform" means in specifics is, "shorter sentences and earlier release." With our sky-high recidivism rate, what that means is simple: more crime faster.
Sentencing reform advocates understandably de-emphasize this fact and instead point to programs reducing prison populations in states like Texas, noting that, in those states, crime has continued to decrease.
I will leave it to you to decide whether what's happened in a few states over a few years tells you more than what's happened in 50 states over 50 years. No one maintains that prison is the only thing that reduces crime, as I noted. In Texas and similar states, other crime-suppressing measures have continued or accelerated. And after Heller and McDonald, we have more concealed carry laws for law-abiding people. We would thus expect crime to continue to decrease in those states, but at a slower rate as convicts hit the street earlier. And that's what's happened.
If one wants a more illuminating example of what happens when we implement early release programs, it's not hard to find. Acting under the Supreme Court's Plata decision in May 2011, California has undertaken more early releases than all the other states combined. It has done so promising, as sentencing reform advocates are wont to do, to concentrate on "low-level, non-violent" prisoners. Reassurance has been constant and soothing: "Not to worry," we are told. "If you like your low crime, you can keep your low crime."
Not exactly. The very next year in California, property crime was up 7%, violent crime 3%, and murder specifically 5%. Car thefts were up 22,000 after having fallen for seven straight years.
Nor is it a just a matter of statistics. A 23 year-old tourist in Los Angeles was stabbed to death by Justin Kinnear 11 days after he had been given early release. He was set loose, to save money, notwithstanding that he had 40 prior arrests, including 7 for assault with a deadly weapon. He was still passed off as "low-level."
One other thing: The promised cost savings never showed up. As the Los Angles Times reported in June, "California is spending nearly $2 billion a year more on incarceration than when [Gov.]Brown introduced his [realignment] strategy in 2011."
But it's not just that practitioners of sentencing "reform" can't be counted upon to release only non-violent inmates. There's a more radical, core premise at the base of their argument: That offenses not involving violence simply aren't as serious as our sentencing system has made them.
For punishment purposes, however, the correct question is not just whether the offense involves violence; the question that matters is whether it involves harm.
Non-violent offenses do incalculable harm. The trafficking and consumption of hard drugs, for example, is one of the most socially destructive enterprises going on in America, even when if comes without direct violence. There's nothing violent going on when a teenage addict slides the needle in his arm, but if he gets the dose wrong, he'll be dead by nightfall. There is nothing violent when a nine year old is enticed to pose for obscene pictures, but her childhood has been poisoned. There is nothing violent when an older couple is swindled out of their life savings, but their hopes for the future are gone. The siren song of the "low level, non-violent" offender will lead us into a swamp in which people who can't afford law degrees will drown.
I'll say one last word. I once thought the ideas behind sentencing reform took root merely in forgetfulness about our past blunders. But now I think there's more to it: It's part of our country's recent pattern of decline and retreat. It turned out that the anthem of "hope and change" was cover for turning away from America's strength and resolve, and discounting the interests of those who lead peaceable and productive lives in order to cut breaks to those who don't.
I hear the beckoning to a similar retreat in the call for easier sentences for the self-selected one percent of our people whose own criminal choices landed them in jail. We're not the problem; they're the problem. Our system of stern sentencing has prevented millions of people from becoming their victims. It's a system we should keep.
Glad you stress the DOJ stat, Bill, that "within five years of release, 82 percent of property offenders were arrested for a new crime, compared to 77 percent of drug offenders... and 71 percent of violent offenders." But what do you make of the possibility, supported by some significant (but debated) empirical research, that these numbers are so high because we send too many low level offenders to prison, which makes them thereafter MORE likely to commit more crimes.
Critically, Bill, a big part of successful sentencing reform --- especially for lower-level, first time offenders involved in drug and property crimes --- is to try to avoid an initial prison commitment which may be criminogenic. I think there is lots of good evidence that are recidivism rates are so high because we have, especially over the last 20 years, spent too much money/energy making lots of lesser offenders MORE dangerous through harsh prison terms instead of investing effectively in effective alternatives like drug courts and veterans courts and other non-prison means which can help make offenders LESS dangerous.
If imprisonment were criminogenic, then, with more imprisonment over a substantial amount of time, there would be an increase in crime.
Is that what's happened?
No.
What's happened is the exact opposite: That as imprisonment has increased massively over the last generation, crime has fallen to low levels not seen in a half century.
Given these stark and undisputed numbers, what COULD I, or any rational person, make of the theory that imprisonment produces crime?
Here's a more commonsense theory: When crime goes without serious consequences, that incentivizes more or it, and more of it is what we'll get. See, e.g., the Sixties and Seventies.
I take issue with the assertion that imprisonment and crime rates have decreased simultaneously "in a few states over a few years." It's happened in the MAJORITY of states over the past five years (32, to be exact). Big difference. And while Bill mentions that crime increased in California the year after realignment, it went back down again in the most recent numbers. Both years need to be mentioned if we're giving an honest assessment of the policy.
Do you seriously expect us to believe that with a recidivism rate slightly in excess of 75%, we'll get less crime if we release more criminals?
One more thing. If, as you say, "we're giving an honest assessment of the policy," why do you avoid looking at nationwide figures?
Perhaps this is the reason:
As imprisonment increased nationwide 1989-2009, crime fell steadily.
The prison population peaked in 2009. It went down for the first time in many years in 2010.
OK, what happened THE VERY NEXT YEAR, 2011? Answer: Crime went up.
And, as the prison population continued to fall, what happened in 2012? Answer: Crime went up again. This was the first time since the 1980's (or perhaps longer, I'm not sure of that) that crime increased nationally for two consecutive years.
And what happened in 2013?
Answer: Crime went down.
What else happened in 2013?
Answer: The prison population WENT BACK UP. It increased by half a percent.
As I said in my opening line, two facts about crime and sentencing dwarf everything else we have learned over the past 50 years: When we have more prison we have less crime, and when we have less prison, we have more crime.
I will happily say that under oath. And I doubt you have any facts to contradict me, under oath or otherwise.
P.S. I'd be interested in knowing, if you care to say, why you want criminals released before their legal sentences are over, when it's their own criminal choices that put them in jail to begin with, and when the huge majority will go back to crime.
The fact remains that the majority of states have reduced both their imprisonment and crime rates over the past five years. I think the stat speaks for itself. It certainly shows that less prison does not always result in more crime, as you say in your intro remarks.
Also, we already know that the vast majority of prisoners will get out someday. So is a crime committed by a prisoner scheduled to be released in October 2020 a much better outcome for society than the same crime committed by the same offender in, say, February 2020? The better question is how to prevent the crime at all.
Whenever a comment starts off with, "The fact remains...," you know that what follows will just walk right past contrary facts. And walking past is exactly what you've done. In talking about crime and sentencing in the United States of America, you simply refuse to address........the United States of America.
Far out!
You say, "...is a crime committed by a prisoner scheduled to be released in October 2020 a much better outcome for society than the same crime committed by the same offender in, say, February 2020?"
Slowing down crime is a good thing, you bet. Do you disagree?
"The better question is how to prevent the crime at all."
The past 50 years have unambiguously answered that question. The way (or one very effective way) to prevent crime is to incapacitate, through incarceration, the people who commit it. This is simply not arguable by serious people.
And no, to anticipate your contrary position, the way is NOT for productive citizens to genuflect before, and yoke themselves to provide more and more expensive social services to, those who want a quick buck.
The long run way to less crime is to build a society of self-reliance, excuse-avoidance and personal responsibility -- exactly the things that the gargantuan welfare state undermines.
Couple quick points, Bill, in response to your assertion that "If imprisonment were criminogenic, then, with more imprisonment over a substantial amount of time, there would be an increase in crime." In fact, as the data show, this is basically what happened as US prison rates started to spike after 1975. For roughly 15 years, we incarcerated more and more persons for more and more crimes each and every year and we kept getting more and more crime each and every year until things started turning around in the mid 1990s.
Given that the average prison sentence for the average felon --- even as we started getting much tougher in the late 1970s and 1980s --- has always been less than 5 years, I think it is fair to look as this data from 1975 to 1990 to support the suggestion that greater use of incarceration in the late 1970s and through the 1980s (especially for lesser drug/property crimes) may have been one (of many) contributing factors to MORE crime through the 1980s and into the early 1990s.
Also, the proper way to assess whether incarceration is actually criminogenic ---i.e., contributes to further crime by particular offenders --- is to compare the recidivism rates of similar offenders who do and do not get sent to prison for particular crimes. And that data at least suggest that, other matters being equal, a stint in prison for certain classes of offenders INCREASES the likelihood of recidivism.
Long story short, you are very effective --- like many advocates on both sides --- at cherry-picking data that serves your advocacy agenda. But for those of us eager to understand the data rather than just cherry-pick, the story about the relationship between incarceration rates and crime rates in the US is very nuanced (and, critically, is impacted much more clearly by other very distinct factors like educations levels, regional temperatures, and seemingly lead exposure rates).
You still haven't addressed how it is possible that most states have cut their imprisonment and crime rates simultaneously over the past five years, if, as you say, more prison guarantees less crime. It seems to me that YOU are walking right past a contrary fact, since you've paid no attention to it in each of your three replies above. Also, this stat comes from a national study, so I don't follow your assertion that I'm somehow ignoring the United States as a whole. The majority of the states are simply disproving your theory.
As for the national numbers you present in your second response above (notice how I'm addressing them directly, not walking past them), you conflate raw imprisonment and crime numbers with RATES. Rates, of course, tell the actual story, since they account for population changes. The national imprisonment rate has declined every year since 2008 and has been accompanied by a steady decline in both the violent crime rate and property crime rate since then. See Bureau of Justice Statistics and FBI data from 2008 to most recent.
One point on which we do agree is that incapacitation prevents recidivism. Clearly, then, the answer must be life without parole -- for any and all offenders, drug dealers or otherwise.
I'll leave the discussion about a "gargantuan welfare state" to another day (and another commenter).
Alas, I've tried to reply, but either the blog lost my comment or it was intentionally not approved. So one more time, with feeling:
You still haven’t addressed my point and have chosen instead, yourself, to walk past a contrary fact. Most states have cut both imprisonment and crime rates over five years, undermining your central argument.
And to directly address (not walk past) your own national stats from your second response above:
Look at national imprisonment and crime RATES, not actual populations, over the last five years. Both imprisonment and violent/property crime rates have decreased every year since 2008. Raw inmate totals don’t take wider population changes into account and therefore are not a serious metric to use. But I suppose it’s a good metric if the better one doesn’t support the argument you’re trying to make.
And finally, I wholeheartedly agree that incapacitation prevents recidivism. So the solution, inevitably drawn from that logical conclusion, must be life without parole for any and all offenders!
From a California perspective it is more interesting to cherry-pick the data from 1965 to 1985.
In 1965 Jerry Brown's father signed the Probation Subsidy Act into law. It paid counties to sentence so called "low risk" property offenders to time in local jails or rehab programs, as a means of reducing the number of criminals going to prison.
It worked well. Between 1965 and 1978 the state's inmate population dropped from 28,482 to 21,325. But contrary to Mr. Berman's suggestion, those property offenders that did not get sent to prison graduated to committing a lot of violent crime.
In the five years prior to the law (1960-1965) the state's violent crime rate rose by 18% or roughly 3.6% per year. In the five years after the Act became law (1966-1970) the violent crime rate jumped 68% or 13.6% each year.
By 1980 California's violent crime rate had risen by 216%, and homicide had increased by 300%.
On my bucket list is an opportunity to watch a anti-sentencing, rehabilitation advocate explain to the parents of a daughter raped and murdered by a repeat felon released by one of these galacticly stupid "smart sentencing" laws, why keeping the killer behind bars after say his fifth felony, would have been a bad idea.
The two butchers who raped and killed Jennifer Hawk Petit and her two daughters Hayley and Michaela in 2007 were habitual criminals deemed low risk and released from prison to rehab by Connecticut authorities faithfully following Mr. Berman's approach. Dr. Petit, who survived a baseball bat beating by these animals, is an adviser to this Foundation so perhaps I can get this one off my list by having Mr. Berman explain it to him.
"Alas, I've tried to reply, but either the blog lost my comment or it was intentionally not approved. So one more time, with feeling:"
Would you believe I actually do not read the blog every hour?
As to the rest of it -- you get the last word. I understand that there are those who think that society is to blame and the criminal is the hapless victim of everyone else's heartlessness. But I am not in their ranks, and will not be joining.
With all respect, the argument that incarceration does not reduce crime is not merely mistaken, it's delusional.
Mike,
Your comment is as illuminating as it is depressing. The Smart Sentencing advocates simply aren't that concerned when things go wrong, as they cannot help knowing will happen.
We simply do not know enough to tell when an inmate is "low risk." It's a guess at best, and if the guess is wrong, someone else pays the price.
One of the good points Doug makes is that mistakes are inevitable no matter what system we implement. With that as the state of play, the only adult question is this: Who, as between the criminal and the next innocent victim, should have to bear the risk of error?
To me, this question admits of only one answer.
My apologies. I saw other comments being approved and didn't realize that mine apparently was still in the queue.
And I was never making the argument that incarceration does not reduce crime. I agree with your speech that probably about a quarter (or even a third) of the crime reduction has occurred because of increased incarceration.
Place all of the recently released "low level" drug offenders in Douglas A. Berman's nice suburban neighborhood. Then wait and see how long it is until he puts up a for sale sign.
-Anon
I would love to have a chance to speak with Dr. Petit, Mike, and also to the 1000s more to families likewise grieving when a repeat drunk driver has slaughtered their innocent loved ones. What I tell all these folks is that, like out downed soldiers, they have paid the ultimate personal price that is part of the cost of living in an a young experimental modern a society conceived and still committed to personal freedom.
As with the moden US military serving in the streets of the middle east, I want those serving in the streets of the US to be safe as possible while honoring out commitment to American values. And, as with the military, I think new technologies --- not really old ones like shotguns and prisons --- are the key to enhancing both liberty and safety. I know lots of folks think long terms of incarceration are the only way to keep people safe, but lots of folks also thought around the time prisons were invented that men would never fly off the earth let alone go to the moon. So, ever the hopeful futurist, I keep thinking we can and should keep trying to do better.
Can you set up, Mike, a chance for me to speak with Dr. Petit? I greatly admire the man.
Finall, am I right to recall that then-Gov Reagan played a big role in reduced incarceration in Califoria in the 1970s? Ultimately, I find data on lead exposure has a much closer fit with crime rate in CA and everywhere else than does imprisonment rates.
Doug:
Really? Your dead loved one is collateral damage and the unfortunate price we pay for living in, say the word, a progressive society?
For some observers, it is always about factors beyond an individual's control that induces him to commit crime. For a long time we were told it was poverty, although crime was quite low during the depression and during American's most recent recession. The poor education argument, is very difficult to prove one way or another but it is more likely that the culture in poor urban environments with lousy schools has more bearing on behavior than the poverty or the schools.
Perhaps lead exposure turns one child among several hundred living in the same neighborhood into the "mad hatter" but I doubt that this explains why most criminals commit crime.
By the way, I was a legislative advocate for law enforcement during Governor Reagan's administration. And while your suggestion is a red herring, you are clearly misinformed about the criminal justice politics in California during the 1970s.
James Q. Wilson elegantly focused upon what most people of sense recognize. Humans adjust their behavior based upon an ongoing assessment of consequences and rewards. Some folks will always obey the rules. Some, perhaps including your "mad hatters" will never obey them. But the vast majority will make that cost benefit assessment.
A successful society is one which catches enough of the rule breakers and makes the cost high enough to persuade the majority that taking the money, or the car, or driving drunk, or killing the witness, is not worth the chance of getting caught and suffering the consequences. This is just too simple for some folks, but most parents and every successful coach knows that deterrence works.
To address Johngramlich's point, the drop in incarceration and crime over the past several years is because of tough sentencing and improved policing. The bulk of habitual felons spawned during the soft-on-crime treatment of the baby boom generation were thrown in prison, and many of the baby-boom-echo generation watched it happen and chose a different path.
Going back as far as 2000, many states began sending fewer criminals to prison, not because of a policy change, but because there was less crime. Tough on crime policies convinced a generation to make different choices.
Now the pendulum is swinging the other way, and I for one, do not have to guess what's going to happen. There are, of course, other factors that contribute to criminal behavior, with culture, to my mind, being a big one. But it is an inescapable fact the level and certainty of consequences are a major influence on behavior which cannot be legitimately ignored or undervalued.
Dr. Petit reads this blog and will most likely have read these posts. If he wants to hear more from you than already here, I'm sure you'll hear from him.
John, I have designated you a "trusted" commenter. Your comments will be published immediately from now on.
"Anon," we prefer that people signing in through Yahoo adopt recognizable and distinctive handles. That doesn't really do it.
Anon: Based on the local statistics, I am pretty confident there are already plenty of low-level drug offenders in my neighborhood, though the vast majority continue to go to work and to school without too much criminal justice intervention because police (and neighbors) spend relatively little time worrying about middle-class kids and parents who smoke pot or do other relatively soft drugs to have some fun in their homes. In fact, a much bigger threat to my safety and those of my neighbors are drunk drivers, who cause roughly 25 serious crashes every week just in my region.
Mike: I do not like the term collateral damage because the horrible suffering experienced by crime victims is not collateral. It is the direct consequence of freedom. Freedom for all requires enabling many persons --- who I think do ultimately have control --- to have the ability to harm others in Newtown and in Dr. Petit's house and in thousands of other pockets of our society. It is heartbreaking, and lead exposure neither explains nor excuses why some free people do awful things. But I remain committed to freedom while still hoping we can ensure security for as many as possible along the way without sacrificing unduly our nation's wonderful commitment to the ultimate human value of liberty.
On the Reagan point, I only know about his work as gov based on the data I read: "In 1967, when Ronald Reagan began his first term as governor of California, the state’s prisons held 27,741 inmates. The next year, its prison population hit an all-time high of 28,462. However, 4 years later, in 1972, California’s state prisons housed only 19,773 inmates and the imprisonment rate had dropped from 146 (in 1968) to 96 (in 1972) per
100,000 population—the lowest since at least 1950."
http://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/bccj/Frank%281%29.pdf
If these data or wrong or there is more to this story, I am eager to hear about it. Thanks.
Doug:
You remain fixated on the red herring and you still do not know what you are talking about.
As I noted earlier, the Probation Subsidy Act, signed into law by Pat Brown in 1965, reduced California's prison population by paying counties for each property felon sentenced to probation and rehab. At the time, wise criminologists told lawmakers and the public that these offenders were "obviously harmless".
Reagan became governor not emperor, two years later while the same Democrats that passed the Act remained in control of the state legislature.
While that law was bringing down the prison population, tens of thousands of Californians were being murdered, raped, and robbed by people you would define as low level criminals just taking advantage their liberty.
It is clear from your statements that you have not talked to many crime victims or those who have lost loved ones to violent criminals.
Got it, Michael: Reagan had no ability to do anything about the laws in place when he was Gov that dropped the imprisonment rate in California considerably. I am not trying to raise a "red herring," rather I am trying to focus on the data and understand what is tells us.
And please do not misunderstand what I say or mean: a murderer is not a "lower-level criminal" after they murder, just like a drunk driver is not just a drunk driver after they kill on the road. But we do not forever incarcerate every drunk driver in California even though tens of thousands of Californians have been killed by drunk drivers.
Doug, I have read your arguments here, and I must say I am flabbergasted.
For starters, I think it's interesting that no one here has mentioned (or maybe I missed it) that one thing driving down the rate of crime--the police are much much better at catching criminals.
Now putting that to one side--Doug's point seems to be that crime is the byproduct of freedom and that we demonstrate our commitment to freedom by releasing criminals from the pokey. To start with, I agree with Doug that criminal behavior can be a natural consequence of freedom--in a free society, controlling every single human being is neither possible nor the slightest bit desirable. Doug takes this trite observation and deduces that Dr. Petit's family was, in a sense, a victim of freedom. Nonsense on stilts.
Dr. Petit's family was a victim of sociopaths and an overly lenient justice system. Komisarjevsky, to any half-way serious observer, had a record that demonstrated him to be an extremely dangerous criminal. The idea that giving him a slap on the wrist somehow is an example of freedom apotheosizes faux-intellectual silliness that permeates academia. Serious people take seriously our freedoms and don't cheapen them with parlor-game type argument. Newsflash--the swift and sure apprehension and punishment of serious criminals is a prerequisite to freedom. A violent, crime-ridden society is unfree.
Doug of course trots out drunk driving--apparently, the argument is that because drunks collectively kill many people and we "tolerate" it, somehow we should tolerate other criminals in our midst. Whether or not our drunk driving regime is too lenient is pretty much irrelevant to whether we adequately punish other criminals. This sort of argument reminds me of the disloyal twits who used to point out some American transgression (usually overblown) to show that the USSR and the US were somehow morally equivalent. I used to win those arguments by pointing out that there wasn't a wall keeping anyone in America.
Doug also trots out the supposed criminogenic effect of incarceration. Perhaps there is one. But it almost certainly is completely swamped by the criminogenic effect of being soft-on-crime. I do part company with many of my law and order friends on some issues, and I get that there may be many people in prison who no longer need to be there. However, that is no reason to be nice to criminals across the board. When people commit serious crimes, they bear the risk that society is going to demand a margin of error. To take Komisarjevsky--let's say 100 criminals had convictions for 12 home invasions (Komisarjevsky liked to break into occupied homes at night)--well, if out of those 100 criminals, only one would act as Komisarjevsky after being released after a short stint, society would have been right to give him a stiff sentence.
Doug, Dr. Petit's family didn't die from freedom. They died because moral pygmies don't have the belly for treating dangerous criminals as dangerous. Why don't we start by getting that right.
Who are the moral pygmies, Mike, who are supposedly against treating dangerous criminals as dangerous? The US now has the highest prison population the world history, it is the only nation which punishes some juvenile offenders to LWOP, and it locks up a stunning number of nonviolent offenders for long periods of time. The rest of the world generally thinks our moral failings concern our extremely harsh punishment systems, not our lenient ones.
More importantly, it seems you agree with all the major points I am trying to make:
1. You agree that "that criminal behavior can be a natural consequence of freedom--in a free society, controlling every single human being is neither possible nor the slightest bit desirable."
2. You acknowledge that there may be a "criminogenic effect of incarceration," which means we may make some offenders MORE likely to commit dangerous crimes by imprisoning them.
3. You suggest that you see merit in the contention that "there may be many people in prison who no longer need to be there."
Put these ideas together, and you get to the heart of the "smarter sentencing" movement. As I have explained to Bill Otis in another thread, this movement will sometime make an awful mistake by releasing early someone who goes on to commit a terrible crime --- just as our system will sometime make an awful mistake by imprisoning for decades someone who was wrongfully acquitted. We should do everything possible to reduce mistakes in the criminal justice system at both ends --- and express respect and sympathy for those who suffer due to these mistakes.
But unless you think Americans are uniquely evil people, I have a hard time understanding why you think our uniquely tough criminal justice system is filled with "moral pygmies don't have the belly for treating dangerous criminals as dangerous."
Doug, it's federalist, not Mr. Rushford.
I hesitate to respond to you because your response is truly baffling. My point was not that you're right about freedom and criminal behavior having some linkage--but rather that your trite observation was used to make the Dr. Petit's family died because of freedom point, which is beyond silly and counterfactual. Komisarjevsky had committed 12 home invasion burglaries (going into occupied homes at night). Those crimes showed him to be a very dangerous criminal, yet he got a short sentence. That you don't want to deal with the moral ramifications of that shocking leniency isn't a flaw in my post.
As for the criminogenic effects of incarceration--once again, you miss the point. I noted that they are swamped by the incapacitation crime savings. And your argument is what--we shouldn't ever incarcerate because we could make offenders more dangerous? Incoherence.
I agree that there are likely some people who no longer need to be imprisoned, and I have suggested in other posts that a necessary corollary to a harsh sentencing regime, which i generally support, is that clemency has a place in such a regime.
I dont have a problem with LWOP for certain juvenile offenders. Nor do I have a problem with capital punishment for juvenile murderers. I don't see that as a moral failing.
Sorry to you and Michael that I missed that it was you, federalist. Proof yet again I get dopey and sloppy at times.
Let me try again by getting back to explaining that I do not understand you are calling moral pygmies in dealing with Komisarjevsky and what values other than our nation's commitment to freedom that explains why he received, in your words, "shocking leniency." Do you think the persons who sentenced Komisarjevsky before his final horrific crime were some how "morally" interested in having him commit more crime? Or did they, obviously wrongly, make the judgment that further deprivation of Komisarjevsky's freedom was not needed.
Seriously, I am trying to understand what "moral ramifications" other than the usual --- and always challenging --- balance between liberty/freedom and security/safety is in play here. I am not trying to be trite: I am just saying that it is commitment to freedom (and perhaps also limited resources) that keeps us from imposing the death penalty or LWOP to all repeat offenders.
I would agree that, for some younger serious violent offenders, the criminogenic effects of incarceration may be swamped by the incapacitation crime savings. But that may not be true for some (many? most?) nonviolent offenders and/or some (many? most?) drug offenders --- especially if the incarceration term in only a couple of years or less.
I am not saying we should never incarceration, but rather that we should examine much more closely if/when/how the "criminogenic effects of incarceration" in some settings may not be swamped by the incapacitation benefits. And I completely agree that clemency --- as well as lots of other back-end reform --- are a good way to try to balance the challenging liberty/freedom and security/safety interest at issue here. I am not sure what is so baffling about this analysis -- rather I am confused about what other moral considerations are missing from it in your view.