“But make no mistake, it’s the conservative “get tough on crime” crowd that has built and championed the justice system that we currently have. Build more prisons and you have to fill them up with people.”
Ah, I see the problem. You believe things that are simply not true.
The justice system we have is a hodge-podge of good measures by conservatives, mixed with liberal lunacy. It is nonsense to blame conservatives for the idiocy of the left.
Further, it is nonsensical to think that conservatives would want to fill prisons up just because they exist. Beyond that, US prisons have been overcrowded since at least the sixties. There has never in my lifetime been a surplus of unused prison space.
Start with actual facts—you know, the truth—and you’ll have a better chance to end up at a correct conclusion.
The effect of these policies is that the crime rate today is about the same as it was in the early '70s. Yet during this same period the incarceration rate has increased by more than 400 percent, while annual expenditures on the criminal justice system went up by 1,500 percent (approaching $200 billion).
The incarceration rate is now more than 700 per 100,000 population, higher than any other country in the world.
The rising incarceration rate has done considerable damage to the black population, as blacks are about eight times more likely than whites to be locked up. The incarceration rate for women (with minorities leading the way) has increased the most, going up by more than 700 percent over the past 25 years.
While many researchers have blamed the drug war for this sorry state of affairs, there is another reason for the growth in imprisonment rates, which is less obvious. I am referring to what has been called the crime control industry. In recent years controlling crime has become a big business, an "industry" like other industries such as manufacturing and retail trade. Literally thousands of companies are seeking profits in this booming industry. The criminal justice system alone provides a steady supply of career possibilities for police officers, prison guards, probation officers and many more. Most of these jobs offer not only good starting pay, but excellent benefits and a promise of future wage increases and job security. The police, the courts and the prison system have become huge, self-serving and self-perpetuating bureaucracies with a vested interest in keeping crime at a certain level. They need victims, they need criminals, they need customers, even if they have to invent them.
Prison construction is a booming business too. An ad by an investment group states: "While arrests and convictions are steadily on the rise, profits are to be made -- profits from crime. Get in on the ground floor of this booming industry now!"
In a sense, private industry and the criminal justice system cannot afford to put a large dent in the crime problem, because it would have such a negative impact on the industry. Two words sum it up: Politics and economics. Politics, in the sense that elected officials want to be re-elected, and sounding "tough on crime" gets votes; economics in the sense of not only the money to be made by businesses but the number of jobs created.
1980 1,842,100
1981 2,008,300
1982 2,194,400
1983 2,476,800
1984 2,690,700
1985 3,013,100
1986 3,241,100
1987 3,461,400
1988 3,715,800
1989 4,057,800
1990 4,350,300
1991 4,537,900
1992 4,765,400
1993 4,948,300
1994 5,148,000
1995 5,342,900
1996 5,490,700
1997 5,734,900
1998 6,134,200
1999 6,340,800
2000 6,445,100
2001 6,581,700
2002 6,758,800
2003 6,924,500
2004 6,995,200
2005 7,056,000