Criminal Justice Disaster
BY TYLER DURDEN
WEDNESDAY, MAY 24, 2023 - 06:10 PM
Authored by Douglas Carswell via RealClear Wire,
Over the past decade or so, America has undertaken a radical experiment with criminal justice reform. The consequences have been devastating.
The number of people arrested in America each year has fallen sharply over the past two decades. Public prosecutors now prosecute significantly fewer cases. Those that are convicted can generally expect shorter sentences. The combined effect of all this is that America’s prison population is now 25 percent lower than it was in 2011.
Part of the reason for this policy change has been pressure from the far left. Ever since the death of George Floyd in 2020, left-wing activists have pursued an explicitly anti-police and anti-prison agenda. But even before that, there were plenty of well-meaning conservatives who signed up for criminal justice reform, too. Everyone needs a second chance, right?
Five years ago, it was conservatives in Washington DC that passed the First Step Act, which explicitly sought to reduce the prison population. Here in my own state of Mississippi, those elected as conservatives have for the past decade been formulating policy in the belief that there are better ways of preventing crime than filling up our jails. Our state’s incarcerated population decreased from over 21,000 in January 2014 to 16,931 by January 2022, a decrease of 19.4 percent.
Reducing the number of people arrested, prosecuted, and jailed might sound like a good thing, but it has helped lead to a sharp spike in crime – including violent crime – in specific parts of the country.
In 2013, the year before Mississippi conservatives decided to go soft on sentencing laws, 28 people were murdered in our state capital, Jackson per 100,000 residents. By 2021, almost four times that number were being murdered, with 101 homicides per 100,000.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/criminal-justice-disaster
