Sunday, August 22, 2021
Under-Incarceration
Any honest discussion of incarceration levels must start with the acknowledgement that the majority of crimes committed in America are never reported or solved. In 2019, only 41 percent of violent crimes, 34 percent of sexual assaults, and 32 percent of property crimes were reported to the police. Of the crimes that are reported, only 61 percent of murders, 46 percent of violent crimes, 33 percent of rapes, 24 percent of arsons, and 14 percent of burglaries and auto thefts result in an arrest. Such low reporting and clearance rates ensure that any incarceration number flowing from them will be definitionally too small.Careful, Senator Cotton. Math is racist.
And:
Democrats are also working to close and defund state prisons because they appear to believe that the prison system operates like the field of dreams: "If you build it, they will come." But criminals go to prison for one reason: committing crimes. Refusing to build prisons does not reduce crime. In fact, it increases crime by letting criminals remain on the streets.
