Policy: Crime and Punishment
File version: $Id: crime.htm,v 1.6 2002/07/03 06:14:34 lars Exp $
The United States have more prison inmates relative to it population
than any other country in the world. Yet we have high rates of every kind
of crime: Burglary, armed robbery, murder. Something is not working.
- Reduce prison population
- Reduce crime rates
- Establish proper mechanisms to care for mentally ill and deficient
"Reduce prison population"
We used to sneer at Russia, South Africa and China, pointing to how
many people they were putting in prison "for no good reason" and
claiming that the fact that they had more people in prison was proof
that the regime was illegitimate. Yet today, we have a larger
fraction of our population in prison than any other country on earth.
What does that make US?
The ever-growing prison population is also an ever-growing drain on our
resources, driving taxes up. We are building prisons instead of
building schools. And let us not forget that the annual cost of housing
a prison inmate is about the same as the annual cost of tution and housing
at a first-rate private university.
In recent years, the crime rate has dropped - conservatives claim that is
because we have locked up most of the violent criminals - but annual
number of years of prison sentences "awarded" has not gone down with
it. Why would that be? Could it be because there now is a prison industry
(construction and operation) with a financial interest in locking people
up?
"Reduce crime rates"
It should be a basic human right for the inhabitants of the country
to be secure in their homes (as well as on the streets).
Although there has been a drop in the rate of violent crime in
recent years, it is not clear that it is significantly correlated with
the ever-longer sentences metered out. In fact, there is some evidence
that few potential criminals are deterred by draconian punishments
unless they think they will get caught and punished, and we have
generally not been very successful at investigating, apprehending
and sentencing.
I see some significant factors in high crime rates, and I think we can
attack some of these and bring down crime rates:
- Drugs - not only have we made possession and sale of drugs a crime,
but because the drugs are illegal, they must be expensive in order
to pay the dealers commensurately with their risk. This in turn
makes it impossible for the users to pay for them without committing
robberies. Some other countries have decriminalized possession and
use of most euphoric drugs, and worked on treatment rather than
punishment of users. Some have even started giving free or very cheap
drugs to long-term addicts so that they would not need to commit crimes
to get the drugs.
- Social tension - When our society celebrates the obscenely wealthy,
those who are poor and struggling to survive (much less get ahead)
can get extremely frustrated. Crime rates tend to be much lower
in societies where the differences between rich and poor are much
smaller.
- Poorly educated segments of the population spend large portions
of their time with television programs and movies that glorify
violence; when these same people have ready access to guns,
gunshot injuries and deaths are prdictable.
- A failing public education system has for decades been graduating
a large number of un-employable illiterate youth, going directly
from high school to the criminal underclass.
- For a variety of reasons, many mental hospitals have been closed,
and eventually those who would have been in the mental hospitals
tend to end up on the streets or in prison.
Marihuana should be transferred from schedule I to schedule II,
possession for personal use should be decriminalized, and a controlled
circulation for medical use should be allowed under regular medical
prescriptions. Sale outside of the pharmacy system should be a misdemeanor,
as should cultivation of more than three plants without a license.
Drug treatment programs should be readily available ot those who want
them, and should be mandatory for a all prison inmates who need them.
At a minimum, we should be able to keep our correctional facilities drug
free.
Public education should be repaired, so that nobody who is educable is
denied an education that makes them able to support themselves and
have families. Those who are mentally handicapped beyond education
should also be taken care of outside the prison system.
Drugs
For the last 3 decades, the United States government has led the
western world in a "War on Drugs", which has done enormous damage to
civil liberties, the economy and the public health.
This document advocates a radical change in that policy.
This fact folder
contains some of the suppporting evidence behind that recommendation.
While it is clear that morphine and its derivatives are quite
deadly, it is not at all clear that marihuana is inherently worse than
alcohol and tobacco, for which we have concluded that although they are
not wonderful in their social and public health effects, a prohibition
is worse than a modest amount of use.
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