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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022

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A new consensus formed, especially in blue states, that prior sentencing laws were too strict. Many localities elected district attorneys and judges who took an extremely lenient stance on crime. This was also exacerbated by the Covid epidemic when jailing criminals was seen as unsafe to their health. The per capita prison population peaked in 2008, and the murder rate reached a low in 2014.

I don't deny that incarceration rates have significantly dropped in recent years (esp pandemic-related), but that doesn't support claiming that common criminals get "released without bail and then have charges quietly dropped". If that's how "common criminals" are being treated, is the implication that the 2 million or so people currently behind bars are by definition uncommon?

They can be considered legacy criminals. The new kind get the kid glove treatment, unless otherwise ideologically indicated

but that doesn't support claiming that common criminals get "released without bail and then have charges quietly dropped".

That is precisely what's happening in many jurisdictions in the country. The 2 million people in prison are there from other jurisdictions or from long ago. A high percentage of common criminals are very much having charges quietly dropped in places like Seattle and San Francisco.

No, they are common criminals who were jailed under older, less lenient policies, because the incarceration rate lags policy changes that affect the flow of incarceration. And despite that lag the rate has decreased several times faster than it increased even during the most murderous years of American history.

Come on man. The whole "it's not happening" thing gets really old. I get it if you support prison abolition or whatever, but why not just be forthright about it?

Right, you tried to hand-wave away the 400,000 or so people in pretrial detention by claiming they are there for murder. It would be helpful if you were more precise with your claims, and maybe if you brought forth actual evidence.