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Advocacy Group Challenges George Will's Incarceration Argument

By David Badertscher, PLL

Source: Crime & Justice News

"The Sentencing Project , a Washington, D.C.-based

advocacy group, is challenging columnist George Will

argument, reported in Crime & Justice News, that the

world record incarceration rate in the U.S. has

produced safer streets and has been beneficial in

particular to African Americans, who are

disproportionately victims of crime. The organization

says that 'Will's selective use of data and limited

vision provide an inaccurate portrayal of current

criminal justice policy and its effects.' The project

maintains that  'evidence-based social programs that

address the contributing factors to crime have been

demonstrated to be more cost-effective than

incarceration.'

The Sentencing Project says that the unprecedented

rise in the prison population was brought about

primarily as a result of changes in policy, not crime

rates. To Will's assertion that scholarly studies have

shown that states that sent a higher fraction of

convicts to prison had lower rates of crime, the

Sentencing Project responds that, 'During the 1990s,

a time of historic declines in crime, there was no

discernable correlation between incarceration rates

and criminal offending.' Between 1991 and 1998,

states with above average increases in the rate of

incarceration (72 percent) experienced a 13 percent

decrease in crime rates. States with below average

increases in the rate of incarceration (30 percent)

actually experienced a greater decline in crime rates,

17 percent."

The Sentencing Project - http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001xkvCOqCHZkfw2FagHdF2mbA7_iitvw24Bitzxd3vvs1pgg6P5QL6gVri3PuA_rZkNW5f4HR0QaevN8xIt01TZd4d9-_AZP-mo1B8xPPXyRcQ-4QhxmZQKPeSY1OWyEfbu3oXlGF6nE-ff5Kn9ch1mbOcEpgkxguN9027L_PNJyGkp9GFq6_CSdO1mJCA5guP-ylePrrTMjzaFGRxxhYicaa1mkse-Iwr

Full post as published by New York Supreme Court Criminal Term Library on June 27, 2008 (boomark / email).