The Detroit News
August 31, 2006

Thomas Sowell: Victims pay price for liberal crime illusions


Do higher rates of imprisonment reduce crime? Are alternatives to incarceration more effective in preventing criminals from repeating their crimes?

Some people would hesitate to try to answer any of these questions before going through a lot of hard evidence and thinking it over very carefully.

But many on the left answer immediately because they know what answers are in vogue on the left -- and that the only reason others don't accept those answers is because they are behind the times or just hard-hearted people who want to punish.

Not only in the United States, but in other countries as well, the political left has held steadfastly to its assumptions and beliefs about crime for at least two centuries, not only in the absence of hard evidence but in defiance of two centuries' accumulation of evidence to the contrary, from countries around the world.

It does no good to point out that crime rates in both Britain and the United States soared during the 1960s when poverty rates were going down -- and imprisonment rates were also going down.

It does no good to point out that soaring crime rates in the United States began to turn down only after the declining rate of imprisonment was halted and reversed, leading to a rising prison population much deplored by liberals.

It does no good to point out that Singapore's imprisonment rate is more than double that of Canada -- and its crime rate less than one-tenth the Canadian crime rate. Many in the West were appalled to discover some years ago, that an American first offender in Singapore was sentenced to corporal punishment.

Few of the indignant critics bothered to consider the possibility that this might be a way to prevent the young man from becoming a second offender -- and perhaps saving him from a worse fate later on if he continued to disregard laws.

Self-defense against criminals is anathema to the left in both Britain and the United States, but in Britain the left has greater predominance. Britons who have caught burglars in their homes and held them at gunpoint until the police arrived have found themselves charged with a crime -- even when it was only a toy gun.

Given the prevailing view in the British criminal justice system that burglary is a "minor" offense and the fierce hostility to guns, even toy guns, the homeowner is far more likely to end up behind bars than the burglar is.

The left's jihad against gun ownership by law-abiding citizens has produced a flood of distorted information. International comparisons almost invariably compare the United States with some country with stronger gun control laws and lower murder rates. But, if facts really mattered, you could just as easily compare the United States to countries with stronger gun control laws and higher murder rates -- Brazil and Russia, for example.

You could compare the United States with countries with more widespread gun ownership -- Switzerland and Israel, for example -- and lower murder rates.

Millions of crime victims pay the price of the left's illusions about crime -- and themselves.

I fail to see how anyone can argue that incarceration of someone prone to criminal conduct does not prevent or at least limit that conduct. Incarceration is indeed only one tool. But our society has been struggling to identify and ameliorate the causes of criminality for some time with limited or no success. While we have marginal control over the causes of crime, we have complete control over the rate of incarceration. Thus, it is quite arguably the most effective of our tools.

There are lots of things to debate about the use of incarceration, but common sense should not be abandoned in the process.

A British think tank called Civitas (run by a couple of former Labour MPs) has some really interesting articles on crime rates vs. imprisonment rates. One of their graphs shows the English crime rate ratcheting ever upwards from 1950 to about 1993, when it dipped some, and then went back up again. At its highest, the crime rate was more than 10 times the crime rate in 1950. Then they show a graph showing the number of prisoners per 1,000 crimes. Guess what? That graph was almost an exact reverse of the crime rate graph. Even the bobble in 1993 where the crime rate declined, is mimiced in the imprisonment rate, because that year England & Wales started locking up more crooks, but then abandoned that response in a few years.

They also compared the crime rate and imprisonment rate with other EU countries. Spain & Ireland had the highest imprisonment rates, and the lowest crime rates. Sweden easily had the lowest imprisonment rate and by far the highest crime rate.

They also compare the US with England and Wales. As the imprisonment rate in the US was going up, it was declining in England and Wales. The crime rate in the US declined, while it went up in England & Wales.

They also looked at the re-imprisonment rate of probation programs. For the most part, such programs have only a short-term effect, and to the extent that probationers stay on the straight and narrow, it is due to the threat of incarceration.

All of this is what any ordinary person would think, but legislators, intent on not spending money on prisons, indulge in wishful thinking and come up with ideas to avoid building them.

Civitas' stuff is very well written and easy to understand. It is good to be conversant with their findings when discussing crime issues with legislators, or anyone else interested in the subject. Their web site is:
www.civitas.org.uk/crime/index.php.

[This message was edited by Terry Breen on 09-07-06 at .]