Prison Population: When Bad News is Good News

In the past week you've probably heard the news that nearly 1% of all Americans are incarcerated.

This news was greeted by the "mainstream" media with the obligatory grumbling about a "police state," accusations of racism, and veiled comparisons to countries like China and Iran.

But when you get beyond all the bleeding-heart liberal whining from the "mainstream" media, what does it really mean?

Maybe we should take a look at the crime rate to help put this statistic in perspective. A piece from Investors Business Daily does just that.

The piece points out that as the prison population has risen over the past several years, the crime rate has correspondingly dropped. Now that's not a connection that requires rocket science, is it? If criminals are incarcerated, they're not free to commit more crime, are they? Check out the line graph on the IBD article--it tells the story all by itself.

So while having a lot of people incarcerated is not good news, seeing that the American public is more safe and secure in their persons and property IS good news.

For those who shed crocodile tears over the cost of incarceration (while gleefully cheering socialism programs not authorized by our constitution), IBD puts that in perspective, too:

Sure, states spend $49 billion on corrections. But according to more than one study over the past decade, crime costs the U.S. a lot more. One such study, published in 1999 in the University of Chicago's Journal of Law and Economics by economist David Anderson, found a net loss of more than $1.1 trillion a year, or $4,118 per American, due to crime.

Even so, as the article points out, we don't incarcerate criminals because it's cheaper than the damage they cause, or even because it's cheaper than school. We do it because (1) they've committed a crime and justice demands they face a penalty for it, and (2) they've demonstrated that we must protect society from them.

We need programs such as Chuck Colson's Prison Fellowship, that ministers to prisoners and tries to help them find spiritual and societal redemption. We cannot make them do this, any more than we can make someone believe something, but we should make the opportunity for real change available to them, rather than denying them a chance at a changed life because we're too afraid of violating a mythical "separation of church and state."

I support such programs as teen court, drug court, and reconciliation programs...as long as they are effective. But even drug court isn't completely effective. An article I did a couple of years ago included statistics which showed that while the recidivism rate for drug court participants is 12 percentage points better than non-participants, 53% of participants are still rearrested. So while such programs help, they are no magic bullet.

Only morality can keep people out of prison. We must teach morality to our children, rather than leaving them to figure out their own moral code.

It must begin at home, with parents who are more interested in the well-being of their children than in their careers or TV shows.

It must continue at school, where educators can teach moral values without fear of violating some mythical "separation of church and state" as the people who founded this nation did.

It must continue in the churches, where pastors and Sunday School teachers teach more than "don't worry, be happy" and teach people about the terrible practical and spiritual consequences of immorality.

It must continue in our media, where we get all the smut and rot out of our television shows, movies and music. We must stop glorifying rampant sex, drugs, rebellion, crime and disrespect for authority.

It must continue in our stores, where we stop selling such products.

In short, we must return to the kind of moral society we used to have...back when our crime rate and incarceration rate were small.

It may have been for this very reason that President George Washington said in his Farewell Address that "religion and morality are indispensable supports" of political prosperity.

Perhaps he and other founders who expressed similar sentiments realized that a nation of people who are unable to control themselves will inevitably need, for the sake of justice and public safety, to be controlled by the state.