I'm all for locking up bad guys, like murderers, rapists, and armed robbers. But when the growth in the inmate pop exceeds the growth in the general pop by more than 10/1, something's really wrong. The US doesn't have a particularly high rate of property crime. We do have a high rate of gun violence, but that's not why most people are in jail. We criminalize drugs in a way no other society does, and we give longer sentences with less possibility of parole. Surely a professional sociologist should know these things.
[WS:] Criminal justice is not exactly my field (albeit it did some graduate work in criminology), but it does not take a PhD to figure out that alarmist statements about growing prison population, such as ones to which I responded, have more to do with populist demagogy than any serious analysis. First of all, the statement that most people are in jail for drugs (about 57% last time I checked the numbers) is misleading because many people are convicted of multiple offenses, some of which involve drugs. Usually, drug possession is easier to prove than, say, extortion or drug deal enforcement, so the actual charges reflect more of prosecutorial discretions and strategy to win a case than the actual offenses being committed.
BTW, anyone who believes that drugs are a "victimless crime" should live in Baltimore for a while, the murder capital of the US (or close to it). We have on average one murder per day, almost of all of it is drug related (bad deals, debt enforcement, turf encroachments, etc.)
Then there are violent offenses that are not reported because the victim know the perp of is related to him. Nearly half (49%) crime of violence occurs between non-strangers http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/cvus/current/cv0327.pdf .
So the bottom line is that the conviction and sentencing is often only a "tip of an iceberg" that involves more criminal activity than meets the eye. Therefore, alarmist statements suggesting that the US criminal justice frames walking innocents strikes me like a jail bird song rather than a serious discussion.
Personally, I am against imprisonment as the only form of punishment, because it is counterproductive and costly. Using jail time as the only available forms of punishment basically precludes other, more effective, forms of punishment or retribution. I also think that prisons are incubators of criminal behavior for several reasons, and thus often produce more crime than prevent it. I also understand that there is, or at lest was in better time, a very serious debate suggesting that imprisonment is the most effective ways of preventing domestic violence, as the more informal means of dealing with it (persuasion, counseling) often do not work.
I also happen to believe that the US drug policy is insane, to say the least. Much of the violence linked to drug trade is a byproduct of criminalization of drugs and related enforcement policies.
But I also find it a bit disingenuous when self-styled populists and campus radicals shed crocodile tears about growing prison population without even the slightest intention to look into the behavior that causes that growth, but instead playing the old trite "blame the system" game. It is easy to speak for prisoner rights in the safety of Berkeley campus, and is a very different thing to stand for any rights, nah, the most rudimentary safety, in the bowels of US inner cities. I think Dennis was right by stipulating that my mind is pretty much set on this issue - indeed I feel no sorry for people who victimize other people, and I am simply not buying any arguments in their defense.
Wojtek