Have you seen this yet?
The chart below illustrates why the mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, is full of shit. He tells his constituents that America will never incarcerate its way out of violent crime. No social system can completely eliminate violent crime. And the best that a society with dense urban populations, widespread idleness and welfare dependency, fractured family structures, the presence in power of policymakers and politicians who promote a culture of resentment and violence, and officials who stand down law enforcement while returning lawbreakers to the street can do is reduce crime and violence to tolerable levels. The most effective way to do that? Incarceration.
Incarceration doesn’t reduce violent crime by deterring criminals from preying on the public or warring with one another. Deterrence requires more law enforcement officers on the street and the aggressive policing of the populations there. Incarceration reduces violent crime through incapacitation. Suppose a society removes violent offenders from the streets. In that case, it follows that those who cannot abide by the rules of a decent society will be unable to commit violent crime. This is logically obvious, and the empirical evidence confirms it, as shown in the above chart.
There is no other explanation for the drastic drop in crime associated with mass incarceration. Our society is neither more equal nor less impoverished than it was in the decades before the 1960s. Criminogenic conditions only increased in the period following the 1960s, which explains the drastic rise in crime since then. What exacerbated those conditions? Ghettoization; the vast expansion of the welfare state; mass immigration that idled millions of American citizens; and the practice of defining down deviance. Who is responsible for this? Corporations and their progressive operatives in the Democratic Party, along with Republican collaborators (RINOs).
Given the degree of violent crime in American society—largely the result of decades of progressive social policy that destroyed inner-city neighborhoods and demoralized the people living in them—mass incarceration has proven the most effective intervention if the goal is to make society safer and therefore freer. That should be the aim of anyone who claims to care about other people—especially those who profess that black lives matter. Unfortunately, the same party that for the most part created these conditions continues to perpetuate them for economic and political reasons, and that party remains a significant force at both the federal and state levels. That would be the Democratic Party.
Some people view mass incarceration as an indicator of unfreedom. But the relevant question is whether the deprivation of liberty is justified. Not everybody deserves to be free. Unfreedom is justified under the principle of just deserts: if one breaks the law, there are consequences, and the consequences should keep foremost in mind the safety of those who follow the law. It is the right of the lawbreaker to be punished for his actions. It is the right of the people to be protected from those actions. Some see demographic patterns in criminal justice as evidence of systemic racism. This may be true with respect to the policies that create and exacerbate criminogenic conditions, but it is not true of the institutions that must deal with the consequences of those policies. Demographic patterns in criminal justice reflect demographic patterns in serious criminal offending.
In the final analysis, the deprivation of liberty experienced by those who commit violent crimes is the result of both progressive policies and the voluntary actions of those who suffer them. Those who abide by the law do not deserve to be victimized by those who do not. Regardless of social conditions, those who harm others choose to do so. One makes a choice to break the law. Their victims—or those they are likely to victimize—have a legitimate expectation that a good society will use the most effective and immediate means available to enhance public safety. Incarceration is the most effective and immediate means to that end.
Politicians like Brandon Johnson (and JB Pritzker) do not operate from an objective, empirical standpoint. Not because they cannot—although Johnson is plainly a stupid man—but because they operate from an ideology that asks the public to imagine that demographic patterns in criminal justice are driven not by the demographics and patterns of crime but by systemic racism. This is a falsifiable proposition, and it has been repeatedly falsified. If rational and honest people are to reason objectively and scientifically, then ideologues like Johnson are among the worst politicians a city can elect. Yet citizens continue to elect them. Therein lies the deeper problem plaguing the blue city: widespread ignorance and ideological corruption among the populace.
Are there other ways to reduce violent crime? Yes. Among them: closing the borders; deporting illegal aliens; restricting public assistance to those who truly have no other means of support; and insisting that able-bodied Americans go to work. However, these measures must be pursued in tandem with aggressive law enforcement and incarceration. It will take decades to undo the harm Democrats have inflicted on American cities over the last seventy years. Given the depth of ideological corruption, partisan loyalty, tribal affinity, and imposed ignorance in this country—largely a consequence of progressive control over society’s sense-making institutions, e.g., public education—it is unlikely that citizens will be able to keep Democrats out of government and elect those who would rationally address these problems at the scale required to re-order society, restore public safety, and reverse the structural causes of criminogenic conditions (what one properly identifies as the evidence of systemic racism).
I will close by noting that the logic behind the reductions in violent crime between the mid-1990s and roughly around 2014 is the same logic that explains why violent crime increased after 2014: the nation largely abandoned effective law-and-order policies. This was not accidental. Beginning around 2010, the mass media began promoting the myth of systemic racism and white supremacy. Wealthy individuals and organizations created and funded groups like Black Lives Matter, which persuaded millions that depolicing and decarceration were justified based on the false claim that law enforcement was inherently racist. This problem was made worse when, in 2020, Democrats opened the borders and flooded the United States with cheap foreign labor—an intentional action benefiting billionaires while disorganizing working-class communities and diminishing the life chances of American citizens.
The worsening conditions in impoverished inner-city neighborhoods are not the unintended consequences of well-meaning policy. The do-gooders are not doing good. Today’s situation is deliberate in the same way that criminal law defines and adjudicates intent and criminal culpability. Because of the way violent crime affects all of us, we are victims of a grand political crime perpetrated by the elite and their functionaries in the Democratic Party. As I have noted before, Republicans don’t run the blue cities. Unfortunately, congressional Republicans seem hesitant to act to stop the federal judiciary from undermining Donald Trump’s efforts to rein in violent crime.
freedom and reason 