Here’s something you don’t read everyday: “Putting People
in Jail Does
Not Lower the Crime Rate.” Unless you are a subscriber to
The Nation or a visitor to the MSNBC website.
Then you probably do read that every day, or something equally
counterintuitive.
I confess I do visit the MSNBC website most days. Where
else am I going to get story ideas and a good laugh at the same
time?
The other day I clicked on a
segment with Tulane Professor
Melissa Harris-Perry, a self-styled
expert on crime and punishment. I was curious why we were putting
ordinary people in jail in hopes of lowering the crime rate. Seemed
a tad extreme to me.
Turned out the segment was
really about putting convicted criminals in jail.
So maybe the headline should have read “Putting Criminals
in Jail Does
Not Lower the Crime Rate.” That certainly sounds more like
something a college professor would say.
Asked about the recent 5.5 percent drop in violent crime
nationally, Dr. Harris-Perry said it had
nothing to do with the large numbers of violent offenders behind
bars. Rather, she said, our state prisons are swollen with
nonviolent criminals convicted mostly for drug crimes and petty
thefts, like shoplifting Slim Jims from the Quicky Mart, I
guess.
One can hardly blame the former University of
Chicago and Princeton University professor for failing to
research the topic. Her teaching assistant was probably studying
for finals that week. I did research
the topic, however, and it turns out that, according to a 2009
Department of Justice report, more than half (52.4
percent) of criminals in state prisons were imprisoned for
violent crimes.
I also stumbled across another interesting statistic
from the DOJ: “From 2000 to 2008, the state prison population
increased by 159,200 prisoners, and violent offenders accounted for
60 percent of this increase. The number of drug offenders in state
prisons declined by 12,400 over this period.” Note to Tulane
students: if you want to pass Dr.
Harris-Perry’s class “Women in
Politics, Media, and the Contemporary United States,”
forget you read this.
ONE WONDERS WHERE Harris-Perry thinks violent criminals
come from? Any beat cop will tell you hardened felons commit long
strings of bush league thuggeries before being promoted to the
majors. Clyde Barrow (of Bonnie and Clyde fame) did not spring a
gangster fully formed from his mother’s womb. As a likely lad of
16, he was stealing turkeys and automobiles, then moved on to
safecracking, and, finally, to bank robbery and homicide. The plain
fact is if you are behind bars for pilfering turkeys, you are not
on the streets committing carjackery. Thus the violent crime rate
falls. It’s amazing how that works.
In her never-ending crusade against common sense, Dr.
Harris-Perry goes on to suggest that locking up nonviolent
criminals is bad for communities.
Here I must enthusiastically agree. Locking up criminals
can be economically ruinous for a large segment of society. For
starters, it’s terrible for home security system salesmen, close
circuit TV camera installers, pit-bull breeders, auto glass
repairmen, police officers, security guards, crime reporters and
emergency room personnel. All risk being laid off. And think of the
poor hipsters and artists who may no longer afford their cheap art
galleries, record stores, head shops and every other kind of
unsustainable business if crime rates went down and the middle
class began moving back into the cities.
Sadly Harris-Perry is not talking about car alarm
installers. She believes locking up criminals is bad for those who
live in high-crime neighborhoods. How so? Because ex-cons have a
harder time finding work and housing, so they naturally return to a
life of crime and, ultimately, are sent back to jail (a situation
she and author Michelle Alexander call “the new Jim Crow” and
people who do not teach at Tulane call “criminal justice”). How
much do you want to bet Dr. Harris-Perry doesn’t live in a
high-crime neighborhood? I do live in a high-crime neighborhood and
I can emphatically say that locking up criminals does nothing to
lower my quality of life.
Last, she would like to see fewer incarcerations of
nonviolent criminals and more taxpayer money spent on
rehabilitation. This is easily done. All we have to do is ignore 35
years of
data that shows rehabilitation doesn’t work.
I suppose I should give up the idea of teaching at a
prestigious university. Not because I lack a Ph.D. in Queer
Theory or Feminist Bible Interpretation, but because I still
have some respect for truth, logic and common sense.
