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Violent Crime Up; Experts Stumped, Part II

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A.  Starting in the early to mid-Sixties, and for the next 25 years or so, the country gave judges almost unlimited sentencing discretion and earnestly believed in the possibilities of rehab. The prison population was a fraction of what it is now.  Violent crime surged.  

Starting in roughly 1990, and for about the 25 years after that (up to 2015), the country reined in sentencing discretion and became skeptical about rehab.  It also adopted aggressive, pro-active policing.  The prison population ballooned to record levels.  Violent crime rates decreased by half, the largest drop over the shortest time in American history.

B.  In August 2014, after Officer Darren Wilson of Ferguson, MO, was falsely portrayed as a murderer for acting in self-defense against a 292 pound small-time thief who came at him, academia and the Left have routinely portrayed police as pigs, and the "sentencing reform" (i.e., mass sentencing reduction) movement has started to succeed, now having reduced the overall prison population for several years.

As Kent notes, violent crime is  --  guess what!  --  spiking.  No serious person any longer denies this.  But the "experts" tell us the whole thing is a big mystery, and, whatever the cause, certainly there is no relationship between A and B.  

This stance actually conveys considerable information.  It tells us a good deal about how "expert" they are, and how completely they take the rest of us for fools.

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