Prison

One of the reason for collecting statistics is to learn from the past to help make future decisions. The murder rate in the 60's, 70', 80's and 90's was about 9 per 100,000 population. Beginning the late 90's this dropped quickly to 6 per 100,000 and stayed that way until the present day. Most see the 1994 Clinton Crime Bill which allowed states to get tough on crime as the reason for the overall decline in crime. The incarceration rates double since 1990. The obvious conclusion was that if you put criminals in jail you reduce the crime rate. So far so good. Then about ten years ago people realized that there was a disproportionate number of Blacks in prison. While Blacks represent 13% of the general population they were 35% of the prison population. The immediate response was racism even though Blacks are convicted of 50% of all murders and over 90% of those are Blacks killing Blacks. Along comes the solution in the form of social justice. The answer is to reduce the prison population and to quit sending Blacks to jail and thus felonies are being reduced to misdemeanors and no cash bail is the norm. Suddenly there is an increase in crime. There are close to 2 million in state prisons 38% are Black and here is a short list of reasons. Rape and sexual assault 163,000 Murder 158,000 Assault 146,000 Property theft 142,000 Robbery 132,000 Public order 110,000 Drug sales 98,000 possession 34,000 Burglary 80,000