The Shotgun Blog
« Obama lies, protectionists cry? | Main | Clueless Would-Be Censors Attack Mark Steyn Again »
Friday, February 29, 2008
Go directly to Jail. Do not pass GO...
Imagine a country that locks up roughly one per cent of its total population. About one in a hundred gets handcuffed and carted off behind bars. Craziness, right?
Imagine that that country is, of all places, the United States of America.
No, I'm not kidding. According to a recent Pew Report, slightly more than one in a hundred Americans is locked up. Those staggering numbers become more worrisome when you look at the breakdowns--one in 30 men in my age bracket (20 to 24-year-olds) can't go to the local cineplex or go to the supermarket or to the local pub when they want, and a barely-believable one in nine black males in the same age group can't.
Men, incidentally--and will feminists please perk up and pay attention, thank you--are 13 times more likely to get tossed in the clink as compared to women (although the women's prison population is increasing at a clip comparable to the relative proportion of women entering college compared to men). But, never mind, we live in an anti-woman North American culture and blah blah breast implants blah blah Barbie blah blah Gloria Steinem and so on.
Why the massive lock up?
It's not because crime has gone up, notes the report. And it's also not because more people are getting caught. Rates of various crimes have remained relatively constant. They explain the mass imprisonment on a scale never-before-seen in liberal democratic countries as a result of a willingness to toss even minor offenders behind bars, and a rise in "three-strikes-you're-out" laws that extend what would otherwise have been shorter stints. They don't mention this in the press release, but the amount of people widdling chess pieces out of soap for marijuana-related "crimes" is shameful.
It's one thing to be tough on crime. It's another to be, uhm, insane.
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on February 29, 2008 in Crime | Permalink
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/22305/26664722
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Go directly to Jail. Do not pass GO...:
Comments
Law enforcement is the only real power governments have over people...so they use it!
Most of those people are in jail for victimless crimes, but it makes people believe that their tax dollars are actually doing something.
Check out the video: http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=TRPxN7DGy5c
Posted by: JC | 1-Mar-08 6:49:05 AM
It also appeases the pink mafia and feminazi types . The media driven , one world gov`t is only too pleased to accomodate them . It`s cheaper than wall to wall ' Homeland Security ' .
It`s a twofer ; not only do you terrorize the less timid , you also get to divide the family and destroy their values . Behold the neuter .
Posted by: daveh | 1-Mar-08 9:33:14 AM
Another way of looking at the numbers: the rate of crime has gone down in the USA precisely because the criminals are being locked up. Don't do the crime and you won't have to do the time. People are tired of prisons with revolving doors, so "three strikes and out" is a response to that situation. Many "safer" cities in Europe are "safer" because the local police will not register crimes, or the locals won't bother to report crimes, knowing that the police will do nothing. There are no "no-go" areas in the USA, similar to those in many European cities. If civilization requires that 1% of the population be locked away, so be it. Let the other 99% live in peace and safety.
Posted by: Ken Price | 1-Mar-08 7:05:16 PM
I wonder if the USA lock-up stats might have something to do with 100% of student assassins being men between the ages of 18-25? 99% of the child molesters, 99% of the murderers, 99% of the terrorists, 99% of the car thieves, 99% of the drug dealers, 90% of the drunk drivers - all men between the ages of 18-25? And on and on . . .
The reason Canadian stats look better is that we let these psychos roam the streets, free to cause mayhem because jail-time is bad for their self-esteem.
Posted by: JJJoseph | 3-Mar-08 10:39:26 AM
The Pew Research reports have become merely Leftist propaganda which feeds phony "scientific" reporting to the Leftist "main stream media" that routinely fails to note obvious distortions (in this instance, resulting from the huge population of illegal Mexican aliens that President Bush illegally welcomed into America via his bully pulpit, as Corrupt Chief Immnigration Law NON-Enforcement Officer).
ALL of the criminal statistics-distortions attributed by Pew to "born in America" criminals, are in fact the babies of the illegal aliens, 100% of whom arrive here pregnant, raising children in horrid ILLEGAL economic circumstances that are still 10000% better than anything any of them ever dreamed of back in HORRID Mexico.
But the Pew Report ignores obvious facts, the data below, come from only one State.....
*From the Los Angeles Times *
1. 40% of all workers in L. A. County (L. A. County has 10. 2 million people) are working for cash and not paying taxes. This is because they are predominantly illegal immigrants working without a green card.
2. 95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens.
3. 75% of people on the most wanted list in Los Angeles are illegal aliens.
4. Over 2/3 of all births in Los Angeles County are to illegal alien Mexicans on Medi-Cal, whose births were paid for by taxpayers.
5. Nearly 35% of all inmates in California detention centers are Mexican nationals here illegally.
6. Over 300,000 illegal aliens in Los Angeles County are living in garages.
7. The FBI reports half of all gang members in Los Angeles are most likely illegal aliens from south of the border.
8. Nearly 60% of all occupants of HUD properties are illegal.
9. 21 radio stations in L. A. are Spanish speaking.
10. In L. A. County 5.1 million people speak English, 3.9 million speak Spanish.
Less than 2% of illegal aliens are picking crops, but 29% are on welfare.
29% of inmates in U.S. federal prisons are illegal aliens.
Posted by: Conrad-USA | 7-Mar-08 6:59:07 PM
Post a comment