Crime, cause and effect

Waterbury Republican-American ^ | Saturday, May 15, 2004 | Editorial

[Graybeard58]

Try as it might, The New York Times just doesn't get cause and effect.

On Wednesday, it published a story headlined "Almost 10% of Prisoners Are Serving Life Terms," in which it reported the number of inmates serving life sentences in U.S. prisons had jumped 83 percent since 1992. The Times frequently suffers from newsroom math and loves to torture numbers to advance its world view, but we'll give it the benefit of the doubt since it attributed that statistic to the Sentencing Project, "a prison research and advocacy group" that would rather not see criminals do time.

To the Times, this 83 percent increase is a crime against humanity. It lamented that before the 1970s, most judges employed sentencing discretion. They could cut criminals slack so that they might rehabilitate themselves and earn early release. But as crime became more rampant, criminals more brazen and recidivism more common, the hue and cry across America in the 1980s and '90s was for more mandatory minimum sentences, more truth-in-sentencing policies requiring criminals to serve their entire sentences, and more life without parole for the most dangerous and unrepenting prisoners.

"The cumulative result of these changes ... is that inmates serving sentences that once would have been 25 years to life are serving a longer portion of their sentence, or all of it, till they die in prison, thus increasing the number of lifers behind bars," the Times reported. Again, it sees that as a monstrous affront to humanity.

But the relationship between harsher treatment of criminals and the 83 percent increase in lifers since 1992 was totally lost on the Times' reporter and the Sentencing Project: "The increase is not the result of a growth in crime, which actually fell 35 percent from 1992 to 2002, the report pointed out. Instead, it is the result of more punitive laws adopted by Congress and state legislatures as part of the movement to get tough on crime, the report said."

Gee. America got tough on criminals and crime rates fell. Perhaps this cause and effect is too nuanced for the Times to grasp.

[Graybeard58]

I just love it when the New York Times get ripped.

They just don't "get it" and most likely never will.

[mrustow]

"Newsroom math," "likes to torture numbers" ... and all in only 350 words! Writing with flavor. This editorial writer is a (graybeard?) throwback to smoke-filled newsrooms with typewriters clickety-clacking away, and desk drawers that contained items more potent than paper and pencils. Even if you didn't see the source, you'd know that this was not made in the Gannett pc factory. Thanks for a great post!