Sites Holmquist trys, and often fails, to go no more than a couple of days without visiting (some of which Holmquist regularly swipes links from without attribution)
"Despite the prison-construction boom of recent years, the rate at which inmates released from prison committed new crimes actually rose from 1983 to 1994, suggesting that the increased number of criminals put behind bars has not been an effective deterrent to crime, according to a Justice Department study released today," writes Fox Butterfield in today's New York Times.
Later in the piece Butterfield writes:
Criminologists generally agree that the prison binge of the last 25 years, in which the number of Americans incarcerated quadrupled to almost two million, has helped reduce the crime rate, but largely by simply keeping criminals off the streets. But there has been debate about whether longer sentences and the increase in the number of prisoners have also helped deter people from committing crimes. The new report suggests that the answer is no.
The article is worth reading as I assume the report itself would be. It doesn't appear to be online but here is the press release from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. It is interesting but not really suprising that the main page of the U.S. Department of Justice is far more interested in talking about terrorism and its counterterrorism measures than this report. Keep the public aware of the evils that still have sex appeal. Ignore those that nobody even pretends to have a clue on how to stop. posted by micah holmquist at 6/02/2002 05:39:00 PM
