Back in the '80s through the early aughts the US prison population increased inexorably and nearly everyone thought this would continue forever:
But guess what? In the early '90s crime suddenly and permanently started to drop from its peak. Incarceration lags crime, but eventually the prison population finally turned around and started to go down too:
This comes from The Sentencing Project, which in addition to historical trends also makes a projection for future incarceration. They figure that the prison population will continue to follow crime trends, and by the end of the decade will be 40% below its 2007 peak.
This goes a long way toward explaining what's happening in California. For many years we were under court order to fix massive prison overcrowding, even if we had to simply release prisoners to do it. In 2011 the Supreme Court ordered the release of 30,000 nonviolent prisoners, which was mostly accomplished by dumping them on county jails. In the late '90s we also added some prison capacity to get under the "pop cap" mandated by state judges.
By the time of the 2011 court order the national prison population had already peaked, but the ensuing drop was tiny enough that no one was expecting anything dramatic in the future. We got it anyway, and not just nationally: In the decade following 2011 the California incarceration rate—in addition to those deliberately released—declined by roughly 40,000.
And there's more: The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, following the passage of Proposition 57 a few years ago, expanded a program that allowed 76,000 prisoners to reduce their sentences a little bit in return for good behavior.
Put all this together and we suddenly have too much prison capacity. All the talk in Sacramento now is about saving money by shutting down prisons around the state—with a priority on facilities that need money for repairs, medical upgrades, and so forth. Why spend lots of money on prisons we don't need, after all?
Here's the most amazing part of all this: It's largely the result of an EPA order to mandate unleaded gas nearly 50 years ago. If saving money were your concern, no politician would ever have done it since they don't care about anything 50 years away when they'll no longer be in office. But it's a good thing someone did it, isn't it?
Would today's Supreme Court have allowed the EPA to issue that order?
I don’t know. We would have to ask the oligarchs that the Supreme Court answers to.
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The same issue came up in Multnomah County, Oregon. Wapato was built to house 510 inmates, but when it was finished, there wasn't the funding to operate and it turned out it was not needed. So it sat empty for 16 years until COVID.
┬┴┬┴┤ ͜ʖ ͡°) ├┬┴┬┴
The cost of construction was $58M but the property is now valued below $10M.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It's hard to turn prisons into day spas and resorts.
But it was easy to turn it into a COVID isolation facility and houseless shelter!
Here's a thought, force the homeless into large, cement shelters with lots of razor wire fencing. Very safe, very prison like, oops it is an old prison. What could go wrong?
Indeed, that was the concern.
And that's why it's been so hard to deal with global warming.
Save a spot for this guy!
https://www.wlwt.com/article/chad-doerman-clermont-county-ohio/44304487#
MONROE TOWNSHIP, Ohio — A Clermont County man has been indicted in the deaths of his three young sons. The three young boys were shot and killed in Clermont County last week. Three young brothers -- aged just 7, 4 and 3 years old -- have allegedly been shot and killed by their father and their mother has been wounded at a home in Ohio, police said.
“In an act of incomprehensible cruelty, the father that stands before you lined up his three young boys and executed them in his own home with a rifle.”
…one of the boys was able to flee but said Doerman "hunted that boy down, brought him back to the property and executed him in front of witnesses.”
But it’s ok. Overall, crime is down is the shitholes of America. Yeah!
Obviously this was self defense. Useless parents. And a mercy killing to save the unborn child from a life of misery and abuse at their hands. What causes this, Mr. Drum? Crime may be down from the peak of crack wars (where mostly criminals killed criminals), but this is what people hear about every day. Oh well. This is ok.
NORWALK, Ohio — Police have confirmed a woman and her unborn child are dead after she was apparently shot by her 2-year-old son last Friday in Norwalk. According to the incident report, the woman called 911 just before 1:15 p.m. and told dispatchers the toddler shot her in the back. Once on scene at the Woodlawn Avenue home, officers found the woman and the child upstairs, with a 9 mm handgun right next to her.
Another responsible gun owner! 😂
😢
Thank goodness the US government is keeping kids safe from serious injuries!
“Over seven million Baby Shark bath toys are being recalled due to a risk of injuries for kids, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
The CPSC and Zuru, the toys' manufacturer, have issued a voluntary recall of Baby Shark and Mini Baby Shark Bath Toys with hard plastic top fins. The top fins on the shark toys pose a risk of "impalement, lacerations and punctures," according to the CPSC.”
Priorities.
Wikipedia describes the crack wars:
Between 1984 and 1989, the homicide rate for Black males aged 14 to 17 more than doubled, and the homicide rate for Black males aged 18 to 24 increased nearly as much. During this period, the Black community also experienced a 20–100% increase in fetal death rates, low birth-weight babies, weapons arrests, and the number of children in foster care.
A 2018 study found that the crack epidemic had long-run consequences for crime, contributing to the doubling of the murder rate of young Black males soon after the start of the epidemic, and that the murder rate was still 70 percent higher 17 years after crack's arrival. The paper estimated that eight percent of the murders in 2000 are due to the long-run effects of the emergence of crack markets, and that the elevated murder rates for young Black males can explain a significant part of the gap in life expectancy between black and white males.
Crack cocaine use and distribution became popular in cities that were in a state of social and economic chaos such as New York, Los Angeles and Atlanta, and particularly in their low-income inner city neighborhoods with high African American concentrations. "As a result of the low-skill levels and minimal initial resource outlay required to sell crack, systemic violence flourished as a growing army of young, enthusiastic inner-city crack sellers attempt to defend their economic investment." Once the drug became embedded in the particular communities, the economic environment that was best suited for its survival caused further social disintegration within that city.
Prisons are being closed in New York state, too. Thirty years ago, prisons were a growth industry in the rural area where I live. Now it has become an economic problem -- several hundred jobs lost per closing, and tax-exempt land that cannot be easily redeveloped.
OT:
Christian Pax / Vox suggests Latinos made a real, significant shift rightward over the last three years, which aligns to, and explains the broad Gallup measure you pointed to, the other week.
Right now there are a lot of Minnesotans ticked at CA's early release policies: https://www.kare11.com/article/news/crime/derrick-thompson-charged-with-10-counts-of-criminal-vehicular-homicide/89-3341df09-a784-4855-98b9-e842755c509c
But it's pretty typical for states to treat extremely reckless driving leniently. CA isn't unusual in that regard.
The sad thing is that no one in power wants to admit this for a bunch of reasons. On the right, it says that it was caused by industry and growth, and also that scientists (those despised eggheads) knew it and warned about it.
Can't have that.
What about the left? Look at something called "essentialism." That's the idea that behavior is a result of something internal to a person's constitution. Even if that something (brain damage from lead) is externally caused, it's still subject to the "essentialism" taboo because it argues against the precious belief that all bad behavior springs from societal (especially racial) oppression. It also posits that a person damaged in this way cannot be helped by some government policy to reverse oppression.
Good things our prisons aren't privatized. It would be nigh impossible to close any of them.
The huge increase in America's prison population was barely noticed by most citizens, despite the totalitarian proportions when it occurred. A significant proportion of Americans who noticed accepted the rationalization to quadruple the prison population as a response to crime and especially drug 'crimes,' which were pitched by Republicans and Democrats alike. The citizens of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Soviet Union were also either unaware of the increases of their prison populations when their societies turned to totalitarianism or accepted the rationalizations for eliminating inferior races or antagonistic classes, respectively. Now those who have lived through this transition of America since the 1980's might acknowledge that when societies become totalitarian many citizens are unaware, unconcerned, or approve of this turn to unrelenting authority to destroy lives.
When yuu don’t enforce the laws it’s easy to have empty jails. Maybe arrest some of the people in San Francisco that do drugs in public, defecate on the streets, rob stores and break into cars. But I guess they’ve just given up on that city.