Thomas Sowell: Criminals belong behind bars

DallasMorningNews ^ | March 13, 2008 | Thomas Sowell

[nuconvert]

Thomas Sowell: Criminals belong behind bars

Liberals ignore potential costs and risks when suggesting 'alternatives'

Thursday, March 13, 2008

For more than two centuries, the political left has been preoccupied with the fate of criminals, often while ignoring or playing down the fate of the victims of those criminals.

So it is hardly surprising that a recent New York Times editorial has returned to a familiar theme among those on the left, on both sides of the Atlantic, with its lament that "incarceration rates have continued to rise while crime rates have fallen."

Liberals seemed to find it puzzling that crime rates go down when more criminals are put behind bars.

Nor is it surprising that the left uses an old and irrelevant comparison – between the cost of keeping a criminal behind bars versus the cost of higher education. According to The Times, "Vermont, Connecticut, Delaware, Michigan and Oregon devote as much or more to corrections as they do to higher education."

The relevant comparison would be between the cost of keeping a criminal behind bars and the cost of letting him loose in society. But neither The New York Times nor others on the left show any interest in that comparison.

In Britain, the total cost of the prison system per year was found to be 1.9 billion pounds sterling, while the financial cost alone of the crimes committed per year by criminals was estimated at 60 billion pounds sterling.

The big difference between the two kinds of costs is not just in their amounts. The cost of locking up criminals has to be paid out of government budgets that politicians would prefer to spend on giveaway programs that are more likely to get them re-elected. But the far higher costs of letting criminals loose is

[marktwain]

Sowell is brilliant. He ought to be in the next administration.

[TopQuark]

Dr. Sowel, a great American, shines once more.
Thank you for the post, Nuconvert

[Free State Four]

Nor is it surprising that the left uses an old and irrelevant comparison

Has an irrelevant comparison ever fed a hungry child?

[Leftism is Mentally Deranged]

Liberal policies have created millions of career criminals. Liberal policies won’t fix the situation. Putting them is jail is obviously not the “best” solution. The “best” solution is not available to us, because liberal laws have created the criminals. The best solution is to change liberal laws that have destroyed the family, personal responsibility, and the sense of shame.

[goldstategop]

The only area liberals apply a cost benefit analysis to is locking up criminals in prison. In every other area of life they are the first to say doing that is cruel.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[Eleutherios]

The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy
NEVER considers the victims of crime
... only its perpetrators,
who can scarcely be treated too delicately.

The victims of past crime deserve compensation
from those who injured them - to the extent that may be possible.
The still-unknown victims of future crime deserve decisive separation - prison or death -
from those almost certain to aggress against them whenever given the chance.

These should be the only aims of secular justice.
“Rehabilitation”, “Giving Them A Second Chance”, and “Paying Their Debt To Society”
are simply the empty slogans of either silly people
or those with a deeper purpose they dare not let us know.

[Kellis91789]

Brittain used to have the only form of penal system that is really effective. Australia.

When people prove they cannot live in polite society, exile them from that society and force them to live with each other.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

He should’ve been in the last several.