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July 14, 2011

The Ends Didn�t Justify the Means

Our complicity in the devastating war on crime

Matt Welch

At the first presidential debate of the 2012 campaign, former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson implored Republican voters to conduct a “cost-benefit analysis” of the criminal justice system. “Half of what we spend on law enforcement, the courts, and the prisons is drug related, and to what end?” Johnson asked a South Carolina audience in May. Indeed, as Editor in Chief Matt Welch argues in his column from our July issue, a system designed to protect the innocent has instead become a menagerie to imprison them. A legal code designed to proscribe specific behavior has instead become a vast, vague, and unpredictable invitation to selective enforcement. Public servants who swear on the Constitution to uphold the highest principles of justice go out of their way to stop prisoners from using DNA evidence to show they were wrongly convicted. Even before you start debating the means of the four-decade crackdown on crime and drugs, Welch writes, it’s important to acknowledge that the ends are riddled with serious problems.

Prison Math

What are the costs and benefits of leading the world in locking up human beings?

Veronique de Rugy

In 2009, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, there were 1,524,513 prisoners in state and federal prisons. When local jails are included, the total climbs to 2,284,913. These numbers are not just staggering; they are far above those of any other liberal democracy in both absolute and per capita terms. The International Centre for Prison Studies at King’s College London calculates that the United States has an incarceration rate of 743 per 100,000 people, compared to 325 in Israel, 217 in Poland, 154 in England and Wales, 96 in France, 71 in Denmark, and 32 in India. From our July issue, economics columnist Veronique de Rugy looks at the costs and benefits of leading the world in locking up human beings.

Locked Up, Locked Out

The social costs of incarceration

Bruce Western

From our July issue, Harvard sociologist Bruce Western examines the social costs of incarceration. As he explains, by taking would-be offenders off the streets, prisons clearly have reduced crime in the short run. In the long run, though, imprisonment erodes the bonds of work, family, and community that help preserve public safety.

Shrink the Prisons

Conservatives are as wrong about prison overcrowding as liberals were about welfare reform.

Shikha Dalmia

In last month's Plata v. Brown, a 5-4 majority of the U.S. Supreme Court ordered California to relieve the massive overcrowding in its prison system. Conservative Justice Antonin Scalia dissented, calling the decision a “judicial travesty” and “perhaps the most radical injunction issued in our Nation’s history.” Shikha Dalmia explains why Scalia and other conservatives are just as wrong about prison reform as liberals were about welfare reform 15 years ago.

Wrongful Convictions

How many innocent Americans are behind bars?

Radley Balko

Since 1989, DNA testing has freed 268 people who were convicted of crimes they did not commit. There are dozens of other cases where DNA strongly suggests innocence but does not conclusively prove it. Convicting and imprisoning an innocent person is arguably the worst thing a government can do to one of its citizens, short of mistakenly executing him. (There’s increasing evidence that this has happened too.) Just about everyone agrees that these are unfathomable tragedies. But as Radley Balko writes, what is far less clear, and still hotly debated, is what these cases say about the way we administer justice in America, what we owe the wrongly convicted, and how the officials who send innocent people to prison should be held accountable.