The Conservative Cave
Current Events => Politics => Topic started by: SVPete on November 24, 2025, 11:41:43 AM
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Shock Report: Locking Up Criminals Reduces Crime
https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2025/11/24/shock-report-locking-up-criminals-reduces-crime-n4946345 (https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2025/11/24/shock-report-locking-up-criminals-reduces-crime-n4946345)
Please sit down before reading the rest of this sentence: locking up criminals reduces crime.
Forgive the snark — I'm not at all making fun of City Journal's Tal Fortgang or James Q. Wilson ... I'm making fun of the fact that our friends on the Left must be constantly reminded of this basic truth.
"Violent crime is overwhelmingly the work of a small group of repeat offenders," Fortgang reported, "that is, it is highly concentrated." But even I was shocked by just how concentrated it really is.
In New York City in 2022, just 327 people accounted for a third of all shoplifting, with more than 6,000 arrests between them. In Oakland, 0.1% of the population — that's 400 people — committed a majority of the city's homicides in recent years. "In 2014, data showed that three-quarters of state prisoners...had at least five prior arrests," Fortgang wrote. "Nearly 5 percent had 31 or more, a larger share than those imprisoned after just a single arrest. "
Fortgang concluded that "The case for an incapacitation-first approach to crime control follows directly from these indisputable facts."
...
Which brings us to the second group of people in need of incarceration: the mentally ill.
According to research performed by Grok and double-checked by Yours Truly, psychiatric hospitalization rates have plummeted since 1963, and JFK's wildly underfunded Community Mental Health Act resulted in a radical reduction in institutional capacity. By 2025, the U.S. will have fewer than 12 public psychiatric beds per 100,000 population — down from over 300 before Kennedy and Congress shifted the responsibility for mental health care to "communities."
Then think of the killing of Iryna Zarutska in Charlotte earlier this year.
Decarlos Brown Jr. was mentally ill. Instead of being institutionalized like so many others, he was left on the streets, where his condition was exacerbated by drug abuse. A craptaculent local criminal justice system put him through an endlessly revolving door of incarceration and homelessness. ...
I know it's a shocking fact, but a criminal behind bars is not out on the streets stealing, assaulting, raping, or murdering.