Saturday, March 22, 2008
Incarceration Pros and Cons
It seems to defy conventional wisdon, however; if this statistic is right, keeping criminals incarcerated is a real bargain...
At DallasNews.com, Thomas Sowell informs us:
"Liberals seemed to find it puzzling that crime rates go down when more criminals are put behind bars.
Nor is it surprising that the left uses an old and irrelevant comparison – between the cost of keeping a criminal behind bars versus the cost of higher education. According to The Times, "Vermont, Connecticut, Delaware, Michigan and Oregon devote as much or more to corrections as they do to higher education."
The relevant comparison would be between the cost of keeping a criminal behind bars and the cost of letting him loose in society. But neither The New York Times nor others on the left show any interest in that comparison.
In Britain, the total cost of the prison system per year was found to be 1.9 billion pounds sterling, while the financial cost alone of the crimes committed per year by criminals was estimated at 60 billion pounds sterling."
