On Dec 12, 2007, at 1:43 PM, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
> It strikes me as odd,
> however, that a marginalized political faction
> striving for recognition and political relevance
> should embrace this issue as its key political agenda.
> It is counterprductive, because whathever the left
> has to say on this subject will be immediately
> dismissed by the mainstream as an attempt to exonerate
> criminals - which you admit is counterproductive.
I sure don't want to "exonerate criminals" - there really are some nasty folks behind bars now. But that's not really the point. The point is that we criminalize far more behaviors, and incarcerate far more people, than any other place on earth. Why is that? Our rates of property crime aren't out of line with Western Europe's - the only area where we're real outliers is gun violence. Put people in jail for even a year and their subsequent life chances are really fucked. So not only do we have 2 million behind bars, we've got millions of more prison alums who are basically unemployable. This is a very serious problem. And it has nothing to do with "romanticizing crime," as you like to say. It has a lot to do with asking why it is we have so many "criminals."
Doug