Barry Latzer, emeritus professor of criminal justice at the City University of New York, has an op-ed with the above title in the WSJ. The full article is well worth reading for anyone who cares about this issue. Here is the first paragraph:
It has become a boogeyman in public discourse: "mass incarceration." Both left and right, from Hillary Clinton to Rand Paul, agree that it must be ended. But a close examination of the data shows that U.S. imprisonment has been driven largely by violent crime--and thus significantly reducing incarceration may be impossible.One small disagreement. I wouldn't say it is impossible. We can significantly reduce incarceration if we are willing to pay for that reduction in the blood of innocent people. Too many of our leaders seem to be willing to do exactly that, especially in California.
"We can significantly reduce incarceration if we are willing to pay for that reduction in the blood of innocent people."
And that's exactly why the MSM continue to deep-six any news story about the Wendell Callahan early release/child murders.
Callahan's three victims are dead today only because he was released early. If he had been required to serve the sentence he earned and got, they would be alive this day.
Try finding any news story about that in the NYT, WaPo, LAT, Boston Globe, USAToday, Christian Science Monitor, Time, Newsweek, US News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC or CNN.
Now let me ask a different question with the same point: How hard would it be to find a mainstream media news story if a cop instead of an early-released drug dealer sliced children to death?
Right. You'd be able to hear the media blaring it from Pluto.
The whole deal with sentencing "reform" is to keep its lethal costs to innocent people -- children and others -- concealed.
This is what passes with "reformers" as "evidence-based sentencing." Better they should call it "evidence-hidden sentencing."