It has worked. From 1980 to 2000 the prison population in the United States increased from 315,974 to 1,428,187. During this time the crime rate per 100,000 inhabitants declined from 5,950.0 to 4,124.8. It continued to decline during the twenty first century. In 2009 the crime rate per 100,000 inhabitants was 3,465.5.
By contrast, from 1960 to 1970 the prison population declined from 212,953 to 196,429. The crime rate per 100,000 inhabitants increased from 1,887.2 to 3,984.5.
I’m not denying that many black people live in a different culture than mainstream American culture. The issue is why does this separate culture exist? Does it exist because black people have a gangsta gene? Does it exist because black people choose to live in a separate culture? Or does it exist because mainstream America won’t give black people access to mainstream culture?
Blacks are discriminated in favor of through affirmative action policies. Blacks who perform adequately and behave decently often do well in American society. At the very least, they are accepted.
An excellent explanation of how and why different racial groups behave and perform can be found on The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution.
So… an 8% reduction in incarceration saw a 100% increase in the crime rate in 10 years – that happened to be a decade characterized by large social upheavals, right?
Well, from those tables I see:
That from *1970-1980 prison population went up from 196,429 to 315,974 *(well over 50% ) while the crime rate continued to rise by about another 50% more.
Then 1980-1990 saw the crime rate per 100K stay virtually unchanged (5950 to 5820) while the prison population more than doubled to 739,980.
Only during the decade of 1990-2000, a decade of prosperity and demographic plateauing, ***then ***does crime drop by about a third, while prison populations double yet again.
I guess they were grabbing only the lazy criminals between 1970 and 1990?
Unarguably, more effective enforcement helps, but “more punishment” is not going to do the job if it’s seen as (your words) “the only solution”. It’s not that simple
( We already have mandatory sentences and three strikes laws, etc. Courts are NOT being particularly lenient. How much “more punishment” is there to deal out, anyway?)
But again this is ignoring the central question. Why do blacks not match the American average without affirmative action? Your suggestion seems to indicate you feel it’s a genetic difference. Is that the case? And if so, why can some blacks ignore their genes and choose to perform adequately, behave decently, and be accepted by American society?
What I predict is that fifty years from now blacks will still have low average IQs and high rates of crime and illegitimacy, and that people like you will still be blaming white racism, even though genes for intelligence and crime will have been discovered, and it will have been discovered that they are unevenly distribute among the races.
Genetic variability. Although the average IQ for a black person is 85, and the average for a white person is 100, some blacks are more intelligent than some whites. Many blacks are capable of learning skilled trades. An extremely small minority can learn one of the professions, although when affirmative action comes to an end the number of black professionals will decline fairly significantly.
The crime rate has continued to decline during the Great Recession. Unfortunately, prison conditions are still too humane. We have a large third world population, but we insist on maintaining a first world criminal justice system. If we returned to the thorough exploitation of prison labor, I predict additional declines in the crime rate.
Okay, so you do seem to feel it’s a genetic issue. Your belief is that black people are not as smart on average as white people and black people have a genetic propensity to commit crimes and have illegitimate children.
Then at this point I guess we’ll have to disagree. I don’t believe that black people are innately less intelligent than white people or are innate criminals or have any other inherent qualities which would cause them to succeed less.
