Mark Earley is not the only conservative who now sees mass incarceration as a social evil rather than a policy solution. But like other mass traumas, the prison explosion has generated thick clouds of mythological fakelore. For instance, many conservatives ardently believe that mass incarceration is somehow a byproduct of the welfare state’s postwar growth. But like it or not, nations with more lavish welfare states, as in Northern Europe, have radically lower incarceration rates than those of the United States. On the left, it’s widely believed that ending the war on drugs would speedily end mass incarceration. But the fact is, even if every single nonviolent drug offender were released tomorrow, the U.S. would still have the highest imprisonment rate in the world, barring a few tiny outlier island nations.
Source: The American Conservative Read full article.
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