Along with the left's lament that there are more people in jail now than ever, even though crime is dropping (gee, think there's a connection?), it's amazing how simple logic rarely comes into play in the politics of law enforcement. In Britain, officials are encouraging more women to report rape but are also concerned that their conviction rate is falling.
RAPE attacks are increasing rapidly in England and Wales, but the number of cases that end in a successful prosecution has fallen to a record low.According to government figures published yesterday,only one in eighteen rapes reported to police ends with the suspect being punished, although government ministers have pledged to increase the number of convictions. ...
It is the fall in the conviction rate to 5.6 per cent which will cause most disappointment to the Government, Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and police. They have succeeded in encouraging more and more women to come forward to report rape but still too many cases never get into court.
The women who are least likely to come forward are the women who know that their case will be the toughest to prosecute. Encouraging more rape victims to report is, of course, a good idea, but it will also tend to push the conviction rate down. However, putting more rapists in jail is good, even if the process results in a lower conviction rate overall. I suppose there's some conviction rate that would be so low that it would be wasteful, but I don't know what it would be.
From an article about apportioning blame for rape:
Although the number of rapes reported to the police has gone up in recent years, the number of convictions has stayed constant, producing a dramatic drop in the conviction rate from 33 per cent in 1977 to just over 5 per cent today.
If the number of convictions has really stayed constant despite far more reportings, that's a strong indication that many of the additional reportings are false claims... but this possiblity isn't even discussed due to the twisted logic of law enforcement politics.
I think the crime rate depends more upon socioeconomic conditions than how many people we have in our prisons.
If that were true, Mark, then the crime rate should have been highest during the Depression. But it wasn't. It was actually quite low, despite lots of poverty and racial discrimination.
It's a nice theory to image that 'social justice', however defined, creates crime. But the facts simply don't support it.
BB: I think you should pick a more recent period to make your comparison. Many other things about American society and life were different at that time.
Crime, like terrorism, depends on people making the choice to commit it. What are the factors that determine whether or not someone will choose to commit crime? There are many, including geography, socioeconomic status, education, local and national economic conditions, mental health, and the result of the complex interactions between those and other factors.
So how do we, as members of our society and electors of people charged with making policy decisions on our behalf, best accomplish the task of reducing or eliminating crime? Well, if *I* had the answer, chances are someone else would've arrived at it first. I do know, however, that crime is a complex problem and, as such, probably doesn't have a simple solution. It's not simply a matter of throwing more criminals in prison or of elevating society economically. Those measures would reduce a portion of crimes, but their effectiveness at reducing all crimes consistently is, at best, uncertain and at worst, impossible to assess.
We have to stop looking at crime as being rooted in one type of person, community, or environment and, accordingly, as having one solution.
Mark: One difference between the Depression Era and now is that the mentally ill were kept away from the rest of society. Most violent criminals these days appear to be what would once have been considered to be mentally ill. They used to be pre-emptively locked up, but no more. Now, getting declared mentally ill is a get-out-of-jail-free card.
Mark, crime doesn't have a solution. It's like death and taxes: It just happens.
Raising material prosperity most certainly does not lower crime rates. If it did, then we would have less crime now than ever in history, as every American is better off now by any standard than royalty of 200 years ago.
It seems pretty obvious to me that crime is rooted in certain kinds of people, and certain kinds of communities, and certain kinds of environments.
Some percentage of people will simply be predisposed towards crime, whether through genetics or upbringing. We can't do much about those.
Communities will have low crime rates to the extent that they raise children with strong moral codes, that is, strong senses of guilt and shame. Japan, for example, has a very low crime rate that seems obviously linked to its culture. We might be able to move in that direction, towards a more ordered society with a stronger sense of right and wrong built into the children. But right now we still have million of liberals eagerly trying to destroy the last vestiges of the morality we inherited, so it'll be a while before there's any rebuilding. First we have to stop the destruction.
Then there are environments. Here we have more control. Most criminals commit their crimes when they perceive a low risk of adverse consequences. Like terrorists, criminals are generally not slavering lunatics. (The rest quickly weed themselves out.) They're quite rational in pursuit of their anti-social goals, and they try to avoid getting shot or put in a cage, so that they can enjoy their lives. As Gilbert and Sullivan put it:
When a felon's not engaged in his employment
Or maturing his felonious little plans
His capacity for innocent enjoyment
Is just as great as any honest man's.
So if you want to reduce the crime rate (as opposed to 'solving' crime, whatever that would mean) one place to start is to convince the criminal that the consequences of crime outweigh its benefits. You can raise the perceived risk that the crime will be punished, and you can raise the severity of the punishment.
Crime flourishes when criminals won't be caught, or when they won't be punished if caught. So if you want less crime, then make it clear that criminals will be caught and severely punished---and you'll have very few criminals to catch and punish.
I find it astonishing that these very basic concepts should be so unfamiliar to so many. Crime is a very old problem. Countless governments have studied it over thousands of years. The essentials haven't changed much. We're unlikely to discover anything new. If you want less crime, catch and punish more criminals.
To borrow from Solzhenitsyn, the 'root cause' you seek is that the dividing line between good and evil runs through every human heart. People will always be tempted to do evil, so governments and societies will always need to tip the perceived risk/reward calculus to convince most of us that evil isn't worth it.
BB said: "Raising material prosperity most certainly does not lower crime rates. If it did, then we would have less crime now than ever in history, as every American is better off now by any standard than royalty of 200 years ago."
Prosperity can be measured in the way you're measuring it, by looking at an objective comparison between that of the past and the present, but what really matters here is the other way it's measured; by people's perception of their prosperity. Criminals and people contemplating criminal acts don't look at their status in life and compare it to royalty of 200 years ago, they look at themselves. Some people believe themselves to be getting "left behind" or otherwise "hindered" by "the system", regardless of the fact that everyone is better off today, economically, than in the past. The economy and labor market play a role in that determination and that determination factors in, at some point, in someone's decision of whether or not to commit a crime.
BB said: "It seems pretty obvious to me that crime is rooted in certain kinds of people, and certain kinds of communities, and certain kinds of environments."
Probably, but as I said.. it's not *one* type with *one* solution.
BB said: "But right now we still have million of liberals eagerly trying to destroy the last vestiges of the morality we inherited .. "
There you go lapsing into hyperbole again. So when's your next witch trial?
BB said: "Crime flourishes when criminals won't be caught, or when they won't be punished if caught. So if you want less crime, then make it clear that criminals will be caught and severely punished---and you'll have very few criminals to catch and punish."
If only it were that simple.
BB said: "But right now we still have million of liberals eagerly trying to destroy the last vestiges of the morality we inherited .. "
Mark: "There you go lapsing into hyperbole again. So when's your next witch trial?"
How is that hyperbole, Mark? Liberals are for changes to public morality. The question is whether those changes are good changes. Once upon a time, for example, liberals wanted to change morality to forbid racial discrimination by government. They fought hard for that change, and won. And that was a good thing.
Now the liberals want more changes. They want to redefine families and marriage. They want to redefine the role of religion in public life. They want to redefine the relationship between the government and the governed. And they want racial discrimination by government---as long as it's the kind they like.
It would be silly to pretend that these aren't changes. The question is whether they're good changes. Liberals were once far more confident on this point. They openly acknowledged that they wanted change, and they tried to persuade people of the merits of the proposed changes.
But liberals don't do that any more. Instead, they try to pretend that they aren't changing anything at all. Gay marriage is a great example. Only a few very honest libs will admit that it would be a radical change, and then argue that it would be a good change. The rest of the libs, including the judges, must instead pretend that it's buried somewhere in the secret invisible text of the 14th amendment, or the Massachusetts ERA.
So again, it's no hyperbole to say that liberals want to destroy traditional morality. They want prayers out of classrooms, they want anti-abortion laws off the books, they want easy divorce. Those are indisputably changes away from tradition. The question is whether they're good changes. And on that question, the libs are tellingly silent. They no longer argue for the benefits of their proposals; they argue only that they have the raw power to impose them.
To bring this back within the scope of Michael's post, there is a traditional approach to minimizing crime: Catch criminals, and punish them. Also, a stable society and public morality that encourage order and discourage crime. You say that's not enough, but you don't say what else we should be doing. So while you're figuring that out, can we keep putting the bad guys in jail?
BB: Perhaps if you would've framed your remark in the context you provided in your above post it wouldn't have been read by me as hyperbole. As it was, your comment was reminiscent of the typical conservative claptrap about how liberals are responsible for all the problems in our society. You used words such as "destroy".. implying reckless ruin and creating a connotation of sinister intent. That's definitely hyperbole. You then, in a later post, talked about "making changes" and "redefining" .. words which were used to create an overall point of making the issue about whether the "changes" are good.
As for some of the issues you mentioned, consider the following:
- Families have always been changing. It's nice to believe.. and even wish.. that "The American Family" is something that ever was or will be strictly one arrangement which is inherently ideal and only can remain ideal if unaltered.
- For the most part, liberals are arguing that religion shouldn't be the litmus test for politicians; that people shouldn't wear their religion on their sleeves.. as so many Christian conservatives tend to do nowadays.
- Gay marriage would indeed be a significant change. My argument for it, in spite of the fact that I'm more interested in civil unions per se, is one that directly ties into the "stable society and public morality" concept you mentioned: monogamy and loving committment are values that benefit all people, not just heterosexuals in heterosexual relationships. The government doesn't condone sex with a multitude of strangers. It encourages the opposite, at least in part, by providing legal and financial benefits to those who marry. Are these incentives exclusively to foster the best environment for the raising of children? No, not exclusively, because having children is not requisite or explicitly mentioned. Monogamous relationships are also beneficial to society beyond the scope of children.. and that's reflected in how the government rewards married people. In this context, reward works better than punishment. Homosexuals in monogamous homosexual relationships shouldn't be excluded from it. Society stands to gain from monogamous homosexual relationships, too.
BB said: "can we keep putting the bad guys in jail?"
Of course. Where did I say we shouldn't be doing that?