The econometrician Henri Theil once said “models are to be used but not to be believed.” I use the rational actor model for thinking about marginal changes but Gary Becker really believed the model. Once, at a dinner with Becker, I remarked that extreme punishment could lead to so much poverty and hatred that it could create blowback. Becker was having none of it. For every example that I raised of blowback, he responded with a demand for yet more punishment. We got into a heated argument. Jim Buchanan and Bryan Caplan approached from the other end of the table and joined in. It was a memorable evening
The Conservative Case for Criminal Justice Reform
And it’s not just the Left’s sweeping indictment of our system that’s unappealing to conservatives. Many of the so-called reforms offered by progressives seem more concerned with lowering the incarceration rate than lowering the actual crime rate.
.. Respect for the equal dignity of all human life—no matter how small or weak—and for the redemptive capacity of all sinners—no matter how calloused—is the foundation for everything that conservatives stand for. Our approach to policing and punishment should be no different.
.. Just as the government has the power to punish those who break the law, it has a corresponding duty to use its coercive powers responsibly—to sentence offenders on an individualized basis and no longer than necessary.
.. The real problem today is not simply that penalties are too harsh or sentences too long—though in many cases they are. The problem is that, over the past several decades, we have industrialized and bureaucratized our criminal, judicial, and penal systems. Which is to say, we’ve turned them into large, unaccountable, short-sighted, self-interested institutions that often treat offenders as statistical units, instead of human beings.
.. And we have a penal system that isolates offenders from the only people and responsibilities in their life that have the power to facilitate true rehabilitation and redemption.
.. With more than 2 million Americans behind bars today, and one in every 28 American children with an incarcerated parent, the figures are truly startling.
.. All told, between 1960 and 1991 violent crime rates increased by a factor of four, and homicide rates almost doubled across the country.
.. Yet the traditional penitentiary approach to punishment severs the offender’s ties to their family and work life. To make matters worse, prison doesn’t just isolate offenders from networks of trust—it plugs them into networks of distrust.
.. This history shows that criminal justice reform can be, and traditionally has been, a conservative project that accomplishes conservative goals—of balancing retribution and rehabilitation, justice and mercy, the rights of victims and of perpetrators.
.. But the reality is that almost every offender who goes to prison will one day get out. We do ourselves a disservice when an offender’s punishment does more to promote criminality than penitence.
At Breakfast to Talk El Chapo, Drug War Veterans Serve Up Cynicism
Chapo, my breakfast companions said, was forged in the early years of the drug war. He was old-school. And for all his lunacy and willingness to do whatever it took to build his empire, he had been a kind of mitigating force — killing when he was betrayed, but staying away as much as possible from attacks against the government as long as the government allowed his business to operate. If he were allowed to get back to business, the breakfast bunch said, he’d take care of El Mencho — most likely in a spate of violence that, while painful, would be quietly treated by Mexican authorities as a necessary evil. And whichever cartel leaders remained standing would be much weakened.
“Mexico’s security apparatus is simply not ready to combat organized crime,” the intelligence official said.
In a Safer Age, U.S. Rethinks Its ‘Tough on Crime’ System
Perhaps nowhere has the drop been more stunning than in New York City, which reported only 328 homicides for 2014, compared with 2,245 in 1990. The homicide rate in some cities has fluctuated more — Washington ticked up to 104 in 2014, after a modern low of 88 in 2012. But that still is a drastic fall from a peak of 474 in 1990.
.. “Canada, with practically none of the policy changes we point to here, had a comparable decline in crime over the same period,” said Franklin E. Zimring, a law professor and an expert in criminal justice at the University of California, Berkeley. He described the quest for an explanation as “criminological astrology.”
.. The fall in serious crime was accompanied by declines in other social ills such as teenage pregnancy, child abuse and juvenile delinquency, emphasizing the role of cultural shifts beyond the ken of the justice system.
“Young people are growing up in a safer environment and behaving more responsibly,” said Jeremy Travis, president of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York and co-editor of a 2014 report by the National Academy of Sciences on the consequences of mass incarceration.