Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Is the Criminal Justice System "Overly Punitive"?

Was my novel HUNTER wildly inaccurate in its portrait of a overly lenient criminal justice system?

Critics have said that. So, I'd like to address their claim that America is unjustly over-incarcerating legions of minor offenders, and even many actually innocent people. Are we truly "overly punitive" and "over-incarcerating"? Is it therefore true that we could safely release thousands of inmates, thereby saving millions or even billions of taxpayer dollars on unnecessary prison cells?

I took on the belief that huge numbers of people are in prison unjustly in my nonfiction book Criminal Justice: The Legal System vs. Individual Responsibility. Leaving aside, for the moment, the much-smaller federal prison system (where there are indeed a higher proportion of prisoners serving sentences for "crimes" that shouldn't exist), state prisons are quite another matter. The "Excuse-Making Industry" that I exposed in that book has played numerous games with definitions of crimes. One of their games is to define "the inmate" based solely on the current offense for which he is imprisoned -- ignoring the rest of his criminal history, and even other current crimes for which he may be serving concurrent or lesser sentences.

For example, under reigning definitions, "non-violent" or "first-time offenders" behind bars include many individuals who have been arrested in the past but not convicted for violent crimes, solely because plea bargaining minimized the charges against them -- or because records of serious juvenile crimes have been sealed or even expunged -- or because they received a "diversionary" sentence rather than a prior term of incarceration. "Non-violent prisoners" also include individuals whose past incarcerations include crimes of violence, but whose current incarceration may be for a property or drug crime. Similarly, "drug offenders" may be inmates whose past records include property and violent crimes, but whose current offense is for drugs. Likewise, some inmates later found to be innocent (say, via DNA testing) of their current conviction offense have criminal histories for other crimes; yet when released, they are portrayed as wholly "innocent" people. Etc.

By such deviously selective definitions, Excuse-Makers paint a picture of prison cells crammed with thousands of unjustly incarcerated choir boys -- claims that the liberal media are only too willing to echo.

In truth, it's actually very hard to get into prison in these days of "alternatives to incarceration." Usually, you have to be a chronic criminal, arrested many times, and be stupid enough to get caught a lot, so that the judges get tired of seeing you in their courtrooms and finally lock you up. Or you must commit a particularly serious crime. Most convicted criminals are, in fact, serving their terms under "community supervision."

In 2010, the latest year for which statistics have been published, "about 7 in 10 persons under the supervision of adult correctional systems were supervised in the community (4,887,900) on probation or parole at yearend 2010, while about 3 in 10 were incarcerated (2,266,800) in local jails or in the custody of state or federal prisons." In other words, the overwhelming majority of convicted adult criminals -- nearly five million -- are being "managed" on the streets, not behind bars.

In the early 1990s, when I was deeply involved in researching crime, the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics provided a host of eye-opening reports about the exact composition of the inmate populations. But as the gods of Political Correctness have taken over the federal government, those stats are now hard to come by, while today the BJS is compelled to collect data on such leftist hobby-horse issues as racial composition of the inmate population, and incidents of rapes and HIV in prison. Still, by diligent digging, you can find at least some interesting data.

From the BJS document "Prisoners in 2010": "In 2009, the most recent data available, 53% of state prison inmates were serving time for violent offenses, 19% for property, 18% for drug, and 9% for public order offenses." In other words, only about 1/5th of state prisoners are behind bars for a current conviction offense that is drug-related. Appendices 16a, 16b, 17a, and 17b give some idea of the composition of state prisons by current conviction offense. But again, this does not mean, for example, that those currently convicted of drug crimes may not also have serious property or violent crimes on their records.

And even if we assume that all drug and many "public order" offenders could be safely released, and thus reduce the need for so many prisons and prison beds, the document "Probation and Parole in the United States, 2010" ought to put that fantasy to rest. Check out Appendix Table 10 on p. 38, a chart of "Adults on Probation, By Most Serious Offense, 2010." You'll find that 447,000 individuals convicted of violent crimes, plus 669,000 property criminals, are free on probation (an alternative to incarceration) -- in other words, well over a million criminals. And to that whopping total you also can add parolees (inmates released early from their prison terms): Check Appendix Table 20 on p. 48, and you'll find an additional 200,000-plus violent criminals and 185,000 property criminals.

In sum, about 1.5 million violent or property criminals are being "managed" on our streets by hopelessly overburdened parole and probation officers who can't possibly keep track of them or their activities. We could release all of the 300,000 or so state and federal drug criminals from prison, and immediately refill all their cells from the legions of convicted violent and property criminals now under "community supervision," and still need over a million additional new cells to house the rest.

And what do these convicts do when they are released back onto our streets? BJS statisticians, tasked with compiling data for their liberal masters, haven't released a fresh study of criminal recidivism (i.e., return to crime) in a long time. But the data they publish on their website are chilling:

* Of the 272,111 persons released from prisons in 15 states in 1994, an estimated 67.5% were rearrested for a felony or serious misdemeanor within 3 years, 46.9% were reconvicted, and 25.4% resentenced to prison for a new crime.

* These offenders had accumulated 4.1 million arrest charges before their most recent imprisonment and another 744,000 charges within 3 years of release.

* Released prisoners with the highest rearrest rates were robbers (70.2%), burglars (74.0%), larcenists (74.6%), motor vehicle thieves (78.8%), those in prison for possessing or selling stolen property (77.4%), and those in prison for possessing, using, or selling illegal weapons (70.2%).

* Within 3 years, 2.5% of released rapists were arrested for another rape, and 1.2% of those who had served time for homicide were arrested for homicide.

Is this evidence that our biggest criminal-justice problem is the "unjust" incarceration of multitudes of "minor offenders"?

So, why are so many dangerous individuals are being "managed" on the streets, rather than behind bars. In 2005, I wrote a two-part piece about the "Excuse-Making Industry" of criminal advocates, many of whom also double as "sentencing consultants." Part I is archived here; and Part II is here. It shows how and why "progressive" advocates of "social justice," who have manipulated definitions and distorted statistics pertaining to economics, have done the same thing with statistics concerning crime and punishment.

Their portrait of an overly punitive justice system is an ideologically driven and financially self-serving fantasy, whose widespread acceptance has led frequently to tragic and horrifying consequences. That was the deadly reality that I meticulously exposed in Criminal Justice? and then dramatized in HUNTER.

Saturday, March 31, 2012

A Meditation on the "Progressive" Narrative

In the wake of the Supreme Court's late-March 2012 hearing on the constitutionality of ObamaCare, many liberals responded with shock and anger to the sharp, skeptical questions that justices asked the government's lawyers.

But why? Why did so many liberal/progressive scholars and media denizens arrogantly assume that ObamaCare would be ratified by the Supreme Court in a "slam dunk"? Why were they so stunned to hear potent counter-arguments emerging from the justices? One commentator offers this:

What can explain liberals’ widespread failure to anticipate the Court’s wariness of the mandate? Research conducted by University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt suggests one possible answer: Liberals just aren’t as good as conservatives and libertarians at understanding how their opponents think. Haidt helped conduct research that asked respondents to fill out questionnaires about political narratives [emphasis added]—first responding based on their own beliefs, but then responding as if trying to mimic the beliefs of their political opponents. "The results," he writes in the May issue of Reason, "were clear and consistent." Moderates and conservatives were the most able to think like their liberal political opponents. "Liberals," he reports, "were the least accurate, especially those who describe themselves as 'very liberal.'"

The article is well worth reading in its entirety, because it shows how liberals view everything through the filter of politics--and now assume, based on their political Narrative, that the Supreme Court's opposition to the individual mandate is nothing more than "partisan politics." In fact, though, that charge is nothing more than psychological projection. Commenting on this reaction by the left, some have opined that liberals just don't seem wedded to simple logic. That is true, but it doesn't go far enough in explaining the liberal mindset.

As subjectivists, liberals do not believe in the objective reality that is the basis of logic. To subjectivists, logic (like everything else) is merely an arbitrary social convention. That same subjectivism is the root of their multiculturalism (no culture or society is better than any other), of their moral relativism (there's no objective basis for ethics, so "do your own thing"), and, in this instance, of their doctrine of "the living Constitution" (a document that is as elastic and flexible as their own whims).

But if everything is mere subjective opinion, and opinions clash, then logical persuasion is without merit as a means of resolving disputes -- and the only thing left that can decide disputes is force. Hence, the liberals' view that everything in society consists of "conflicts of interest" and "power relationships"; hence, their quest for unlimited power to dominate, rule, and control others; and hence, their efforts to transform everything that we are, have, or do into a political issue: into a matter to be decided by wielding coercive political power over others.

But why should they, the liberals, be the ones wielding that power?

That's where their "Narrative" comes in. The liberal Narrative is rooted not in the logical, but the psychological. In their morality play, they have cast themselves as "progressives" -- as the smartest, most educated, most culturally sophisticated, most sensitive, most enlightened people on the planet, in contrast with the vast, crude masses of rubes, idiots, bigots, and know-nothings (i.e., the rest of us). The liberals' motive in holding and advancing this Narrative is the indispensable role that it plays in inflating their egos and self-regard. In their self-flattering psychodrama, they cast themselves as the Ruling Class, the social elite that -- by virtue of intellectual, moral, and esthetic superiority -- is entitled to lord it over their inferiors (i.e., the rest of society).

If you want a clear glimpse of the self-congratulatory "progressive" worldview, try to dig up a copy of the old H.G. Wells film "Things to Come." Wells was a socialist, and in his dystopian, sci-fi fantasy, he imagined a benevolent technocratic elite taking over a world that had descended into tribes of savages. Now, there's a lot I like about the film on a metaphysical level: Its no-limits view of human potential reminded me of "Star Trek" ("to boldly go where no man has gone before"). But its view of society is unadulterated "progressive" arrogance: A small, educated in-group of sophisticated geniuses takes total political power, becoming a new Ruling Class to civilize the savage masses...for their own good.

That's the essence of the liberal/progressive Narrative. And philosophical subjectivism allows them to use any means they wish to achieve that total power over the rest of us "savages."

If you now take all of this and apply it to the ObamaCare debate before the Supreme Court, you'll understand at once what was going on, and why the left is so shocked and indignant over the skeptical questioning by the justices. Their legal subjectivism was being challenged, at root. The justices were asking them what "limiting principle" existed upon the power they wish to assume over private economic relationships, and they couldn't answer because they don't have one, or believe that one should exist. Their arguments were transparent sophistry, attempts to provide legalistic excuses to grant them UNlimited power over the lives of the savages. That they should be required to justify this quest clashed with their entire Narrative, and the subjectivism that rationalizes it.

And so how do they respond? Only as they can, through their Narrative filter: Since to them, everything is a "political power relationship," they could only besmirch the alleged political motives of the skeptical justices as being "partisan" and "pro-Republican." This, to the liberal, is a necessary substitute for an argument based on the merits -- on facts and logic -- because the latter don't count in their subjective universe, except as tools of political manipulation.

There are broader, pessimistic conclusions to be drawn here, for example, about the possibility of persuading people wedded to the progressive/subjective Narrative, or about how we ought to engage and fight them. I've argued in my previous essay here on "The Narratives That Guide Our Lives" that the best approach is to advance a compelling counter-narrative. But what that is, and how it might be advanced, are topics for future development and discussion.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

CLIMATEGATE 2.0 -- the global-warming scandal continues

5,000 newly leaked emails reveal that "scientists DID collude with government officials to hide research that didn't fit their apocalyptic global warming...deleted evidence that cast doubt on claims climate change was man-made...[and] were under orders from US and UK officials to come up with a 'strong message'"

Connect this with the previous post about leading climate alarmist Dr. James Hansen of NASA, who has become rich and famous by spreading this hysteria, and you'll see exactly what this 20-plus-year scam has been all about.