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Why does George Will like big government when it involves depriving some citizens of liberty?

By Douglas A. Berman

Just last week, George F. Will wrote in this column that "No state power is more fearsome than the power to imprison."  And Wll has recently criticized modern Republicans for growing the size of government (such as in this 2006 speech to the Cato Institute in which Will stressed that "liberty has to be fought for and argued for and defined").  Indeed, in various contexts, Will has often espoused the virtues of "libertarian, limited-government conservatism." But, as detailed from his column today in the Washington Post, titled "More Prisoners, Less Crime," his support for limited government and his purported commitment to liberty melts away when the topic is crime and punishment.  Disappointingly, rather than take a serious look at the important economic and human liberty questions surrounding modern mass incarceration (which Senator Webb just this week was exploring), Will in this column simply echos pro-imprisonment researchers, who assert that the US affinity for mass incarceration is producing more gains than harms, in order to attack liberals for questioning the extreme US incarceration rate...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on June 22, 2008 (boomark / email).