Conrad Blackís prison routine allows him time to think and write, which is a good thing in view of the enormous waste that results from his dubious imprisonment.
This week Lord Black takes aim at the myth of American exceptionalism promoted in this recent Richard Lowry and Ramesh Ponnurus essay (Walter McDougall has examined the origins of this myth in detail in the first two books of his fine three-part series on American history). In challenging the myth, Lord Black takes dead aim at a common topic on this blog ñ the overcriminalization of American life:
The wages of this [Cold War] victory have included the stale-dating of the authorsí claim that America ìis freer, more individualistic, more democratic, and more open and dynamic than any other nation on earth.î It is more dynamic because of its size, the torpor of Europe and Japan, and the shambles of Russia.
But Americans do not do themselves a favor by not recognizing the terrible erosion of their countryís education, justice, and political systems, the shortcomings of U.S. health care, the collapse of its financial industry, the flight of most of its manufacturing, and the steep and generally unlamented decline of its prestige.
. . . Rampaging and often lawless prosecutors win 95 percent of their cases (compared to 55 percent in Canada), by softening the pursuit of some in exchange for inculpatory perjury against others, in the plea-bargain system. The U.S. has six to fourteen times as many imprisoned people as other advanced prosperous democracies, and they languish in a corrupt carceral system that retains as many people as possible for as long as possible. There are an astounding 47 million Americans with a ìrecord,î and the country glories with unseemly glee in the joys of the death penalty. Due process and the other guarantees of individual rights of the Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments (such as the grand jury as any sort of assurance against capricious prosecution) scarcely exist in practice.
Most of the Congress is an infestation of paid-for legislators from rotten boroughs, representing the interests that finance their elections and exchanging earmarks with their colleagues like casbah hucksters. . . .
Lord Black can sure still turn a phrase — ìcasbah hucksters.î Ha!
tom,
you have done an excellent job of pointing out abusive prosecutions, especially in white-collar cases and the substance of your points has been terrific. posts like this undermine the credibility of such, with dubious links to the issue of american exceptionalism. also, i, for one, remembering higher violent crime before we built a lot of prisons, appreciate the fact we have confined the violent = good government.
I disagree with Dr. Tom. I think posts like this are a taste of the truthful medicine we need. The US has made serious missteps over the last decade that have changed the status and prospects for our nation. We need good leaders to improve our course, but Washington politicians are in a polarized and self-defeating mode that renders them worse than useless. High imprisonment rates are a serious social ill that is burdensome to our nation. The combination of prison racial stats and employment racial stats make clear that high imprisonment is a by-product of the harsh racial divide that still exists in this country. Silent discrimination keeps blacks from having equal access to jobs, opportunity and co-existence. As a result, black males in particular are spiraling off into a problematic sub-culture that is getting worse every year. It will be very difficult to reconcile them back into the mainstream. It’s time for us to get real.
Dr. Tom, Scott Henson over at Grits for Breakfast has blogged extensively about the dubious claim that high incarceration rates lead to reduced crime levels. In fact, there is evidence of precisely the opposite. A good starting point to review these issues is here.
dear careener,
let’s DO get real, as you propose. the article says 47 million have a record. many of us acknowledge a tiny fraction of those may be due to mistakes and abuses tom kirkendall and others have articulated but most are because they elected to break societies laws, have been caught and punished.
we cannot “get real” by putting forward theories of injustice–you see an injustice, knock yourself out to correct it but do not confuse that with our need to punish lawbreakers–i care more about the state doing the good-government thing of protecting those who choose to do right from those who choose to do wrong, whether rich, poor or whatever color or demographic.
many excellent points can be made about laws that are stupid or injustices in our society but they ought not cloud our vision–do wrong, get caught, be punished…………..
tom,
1990 texas had about 40k prison beds and now 140k.
violent crime is down = good, but the point that MORE people in for smaller crimes and that may be counter-productive, is probably a good point. if drugs were legalized, we might have to deal with more addiction but might free up the prison beds to keep the genetically violent apart from those who prefer non-violence and might not have so many people experience being “criminal”.
Dr. Tom, no doubt that our dubious policy of criminalizing drug use rather than treating it has greatly increased the incarceration rate. We are now seeing the same problem arise in regard to enforcement of child predator laws where the law, the prosecutors and the judges are not distinguishing between the true child predators who need to be locked up and kids who stupidly (but without criminal intent) download child porn. The result of this frightful culture that I referred to in the final paragraph of this post
tom, seems to me most of our public conversations on law and order seem to pit “lock em all up and throw away the key” against the “poor guy was just misunderstood and needs therapy” crowd.
i might be mistakenly taken for the former because i think the state should own violent criminals–i think it is the first job of the state–let’s protect ourselves. i might further mistake you for the latter?–perhaps because you have a passion for, correctly i think, pointing out wrong-headed notions of good law and order.
at your leisure, perhaps you could reassure some of us that you DO favor the state keeping the predators out of our homes, don’t you?
Dr. Tom, I would put it this way. I’m strongly in favor of the state locking up violent criminals and child predators and throwing away the key. My concern is that our current incarceration policies actually divert limited resources from accomplishing that goal.
tom, i agree.