I am but a simpleminded 30-something from middle America; incapable of the type of high-level thought of my betters. It is not, necessarily, that I am, lets say, unable to understand the conclusions to be drawn from a spreadsheet full of numbers. But, more so, that the added time I require to kick off my shoes and socks, to allow for full access of all my fingers & toes, delays my arrival at those conclusions to a time further in the future than the “smart kids” in class. For this reason, I developed the habit of simply ‘getting by’ while in school so I could devote the appropriate amount of time to improving my kill-to-death ratio. After all, when the plan is to ‘be on the sticks by 9:00,’ you better be in the pre-game lobby by 8:55. Lest ye endure the risk of missing out on a run.
While in school, this tends to result in failing to finish as much of the homework as smart kids while, generally, descent performance on exams (exams usually just checked to see if you get it, and I got it). However, in the real world, this habit tended to manifest itself in my outsourcing of all the ‘thinking’ to those same ‘smart kids.’ And this, combined with the passage of time, tends to convince a person that they are not, merely, lazy, but that they are lacking a fundamentally capacity to think about complex things. And once this mindset is adopted, as always, people can tend to not only embrace their shortcomings, but almost advocate for them by projecting them on to everyone around them as a way of flexing their intellectual might to others. [“I don’t know what the experts know and neither to you, cuz you’re like me. Only I’m smart enough to listen to the experts so, de facto, I’m actually smarter than you.”] is kind of the sentiment you get.
I know this seems like a reach, but I think there’s something to it. The amount of people that are so incredibly sanctimonious about their blind references to authority is insane. Ask these people to explain the things they are so passionately advocating for and you will get any number of different responses. All of which are the same answer; “Because the ‘experts’ say it and you’re too stupid to fully understand.”
But, alas, this isn’t true. The thing that sticks out most about getting older is the gradual recognition of the humanity of our authoritative sources. Obviously, current societal trends amplify the speed and potency of this realization. My grandpa has always said that the way you define an expert is “a drip under pressure.” I’ve never fully understood that saying, but I understood the sentiment. And I think, whatever it means, it’s so much more applicable now than it ever has been.
The dangers with this current trend abound. So many tend to spend about 2 hours on YouTube and settle on their brand new unified theory of everything, and then never ask anymore questions. I always think of this as a “dangerous level of education”. I’ve, traditionally, referred to it as the ‘college Sophomore.’ When a Sophomore in college thinks they have all the answers and never bother to ask any more questions about the world, they become the AOCs of the country (or, really, 90% of congresspeople under the age of 50). The unmasking of our expert class can only act as a positive for society as long as the questions never stop. Once we quit asking questions, it becomes a negative. IDK, that’s my current theory anyway.
Why torture you with such a slog of disjointed thoughts and half-baked cockamamie radicalism in a post about criminal justice reform you might ask? What reason could I possibly have for delaying your return to Twitter so you can find that quote tweet you were moderately interested in? Or causing you to forget about which fantasy stats you were planning to look up before your boss circles back by your desk? Well, there’s no good reason. As mentioned before, I was a slacker in school and never learned how to fully develop and present my thoughts. My bad.
But, if there was a point, I think it would be that, when it comes to understanding anything about the world, it is important to believe that we are capable of understanding things. Our antennae should always go up every time we hear a reference to authority in any debate. And not that we should fight it ever time, but where we are able to identify the crux of a dispute as residing, exclusively, within a reference to authority that is unable to be explained by the participant using it, then there must either be a mutual decision to re-focus the debate to that subject, or, at the very least, any further discussion should certainly be suspended until it is resolved. There is nothing more frustrating, when taking in a debate, than when the participants spend the first 30 minutes spewing frivolous information at each other and finally arrive at the core of the entire argument only to “agree to disagree” and more on for another hour and a half wasting everyone’s time with all the other words they’d planned on saying. (and yes I’m aware of the irony here)
And for those of us that have unashamedly identified ourselves as “Conservatives,” we understand the importance of asking questions more than most. For many of us conservatives,(not all, or maybe even most), we understand that ‘conservatism’ does not mean church on Sunday and a gun rack. As we see it, conservatism is about identifying and “conserving” the things in our society that are good and have gotten us to where we are a western civilization. And when it comes to so many social and political(but I repeat myself) issues of today, modern conservatives(under age 40) are often starting out from an incorrect premise. I mean, it’s not totally our fault. After almost 70 years of “Liberal/Progressive” influence on the country(on balance) one could argue that the actual “conservatives” at our age would be the ones intent on maintaining that leftward pace. And that, whatever we are, would actually be the change agents here in 2022. But I digress (the names of political or social movements don’t actually mean anything most of the time anyway. Just another 5 minutes of your time wasted).
And, so, when it comes to “Criminal Justice Reform” , I have believed for a while now that we are beginning from a false premise. Full disclosure, this particular radical view is not, altogether, uncommon. In fact, Matt Walsh recently covered it in a podcast which, perhaps subconsciously, contributed to my desire to write about it.
Talk to most Boomers, and almost all Gen Xers down to Gen…Alpha??(if you happen to stumble upon a 12-year-old with strong feelings on the subject) When you do, you will hear almost unanimous consent on the issue: “Something must be done.”
The lefties will gravitate toward the systemic ‘istaphobe’ nature of the prison system while your right-leaning type will subscribe to the liberty themes surrounding it, but almost all of them will agree to the general sentiment that ‘something must be done about the awful and unjust institution so that we can lock less people up,’ whether in the name of liberty or Social Justice.
For my part, I nodded my head in agreement for most of my life(once I learned what Criminal Justice Reform meant). I mean, I’ve seen The Shawshank Redemption, Con Air, The Green Mile, The Rock, 48-Hours, and…well, every movie that depicted anyone in prison. It sure seemed like every single person in prison was either wrongfully accused, or just “good people” that need a do-over.
[Side Note: I challenge you to find a popular movie or TV show that depicts any prison population as irredeemable. American History X, almost?]
[2nd side Note: Perhaps this speaks to our obsession with the issue as well….hmmm]
However, as I began to experience life, it became clear, pretty quickly, that the depiction of prison, and just the nature of people in general, that I was getting from my TV set was quite a bit different from the real world. Jails, and especially prisons, are not filled to the brim with remorseful saints that just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
One thing that really stuck out to me was just how hard it is to go to prison. Having had my own frequent brushes with the law in my younger days, I never, so much as spent the night in jail. A couple hours in a drunk tan, at most, and I hardly had a single infraction. Granted, alcohol-related offenses are often treated differently from others. And I’ll be generous and grant you that even violent altercations, like that of a bar brawl, rarely get taken super seriously, but I think that helps prove my point a bit.
I once talked to a guy that had 9DUIs and had never spent so much as 72 hours in the clink. And still had his driver’s license. The truth is, we have quite a few options, as degenerates, for avoiding jail, between diversions, plea deals, community service, and well-known lawyer tricks.
And when it comes to prison?? Forget about it. The number of people I know with multiple drug arrests are numerous. The number of people I know that have spent time in prison because of them is 0. Granted, I only know a couple people(3) that have actually been in prison, and my own experience means zilch, but this is the anecdotal portion of the post so get over it. But, of those that I know, all of them were either for violent crimes or large scale drug manufacturing and distribution. And none of these people were the types of people that we, as a society, would be clamoring to let out. No Andy Dufresne or John Coffey’s to speak of. PLUS, they had all served their time and were now efforting to become productive members of society. So, you could say, the sentences worked.
And on to the next point; our laser focus on the “proper punishment” of criminals. Why is it that we even lock up these people with proven anti-social behavior? Honestly? Is it because the criminals “deserve” a certain amount of punishment? Cuz, for my part, I’d always been led to believe that it was more about protecting society from them, Right? In the name of preservation? Now, I can see where a criminal justice system that is perceived to go overboard for “victimless crimes” may divert our attention away from the good of society and onto the punishment, but we would be wise not to lose sight of this when we begin asking questions on the subject. Would we be unable, as a society, to agree that a person cooking meth or dealing cocaine on the playground is a ‘menace to society’? At the very least, that they hold no reverence for the law?
And I get it, for you liberty-minded folks, ‘you can’t legislate morality,’ I guess. But, at the risk of going full-liberal, I do think there’s something to the establishment of societal norms through the laws that we agree to. Because there are plenty of people that want to “do right.” And much of their direction for “doing right” comes from the society they live in. And, yes, I do believe the law serves as a bit of a barometer for many(even if it is becoming less and less so).
So, fine, to those in the liberty camp who merely believe that “Criminal Justice Reform” should be the legalization of drugs because of its “victimless” status, I suppose that is where we would need to suspend the debate. There would be no need to debate further with you on the Criminal Justice Reform topic until that could be resolved (see:above). I would only add that, if you’re categorizing “Criminal Justice Reform” and “Drug Legalization” you’re missing the mark, and we may find more common ground than you think (although I’m skeptical).
As for the race obsessed, it’s really almost unworthy of the keystrokes. Almost. I would start by, first, challenging the “link between poverty and crime” that is spouted so often by folks in this camp. The cause and effect of this ‘theory’ is widely disputed amongst credible social scientists (convincingly in fact. You might even say “debunked” IMO). This isn’t to say that they are not linked at all; people that are locked up for crime do tend to be poorer. But rather the notion that their poverty is what landed them there. So, if we wanted to debate this fact, we would certainly want to pause and hash it out. Afterall, here is one of my own references to authority. However, I do not view the crux of the Social Justice view on Criminal Justice Reform to lie in the debate about poverty and crime, so I think it’d be safe that we move on. Afterall, even if poverty did cause crime, the crime would be no less a crime. A murder victim is no less a murder victim because the perpetrator was poor. And I think honest lefties could eventually agree that, if battling poverty was their true crusade, Criminal Justice Reform would have no business on their agenda.
So, for the tired, yet still effective(see: St. Floyd), narrative of “Institutional Racism in Policing” crowd, once I finish cringing my socks off, I will ask you for data. Because, so often, those who are challenged on this point eventually get down to the stage of the conversation where they will throw their hands up and say “We can’t really tell how racist they are because we can’t trust their racist numbers!” Thus completing the circular logic of their conspiracy. The depressing part of this exercise of dimwittedness is not the people that make the claim, it’s that so many just buy it! At best, lookers-on may think to themselves “Well, that could be true or not. Either way, it sounds like we need to fix it.” And this is the defeat of common sense that we find in so many other areas of contention in the country.
Because if you take the time to think about this claim “The police are racist and we can’t prove it because the agencies that report on it are covering it up or lying about it,” there are, surely, several holes with it. I will merely focus on the 3 issues I have with it.
1. If you’re suggesting that cops let white people go more than black people, I would say that you’re talking about individual racists and not institutional.
Because, contrary to popular belief, police tend to have a little agency when it comes to low-level crimes. Deciding whether to issue a citation or press charges can often rest on the shoulders of the responding officer. And ‘warnings’ are often granted to all colors, if nothing more than for convenience. Police hate paperwork just as much as the next guy. So, if I could reference, again, the number of minorities in law enforcement, your argument would be resting on the idea that “institutional racism” as you describe it, acts as such a brainwash tactic as to compel the minority police officer to consistently go harder on the perp that “looks like him” than the white guy. Yours is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence. Of which, I’ve seen none.
[As for my own theory, I believe minorities get far more “warnings” than white guys. There has been so much emphasis put on skin color and the plight of the “poor brown man” that police (and teachers) will bend over backward in an effort to give minorities every possible opportunity for redemption before they take official action. Consequently, I see this as a terrible practice for minorities. Both because it incentivises the behavior in question(people will always go to the very edge of their limits), but also, when law enforcement finally ‘has enough,’ and decides to take action, they, then, can tend to “throw the book at them,” so to speak. And, for that reason, the records might reflect harsher penalties for these minorities than their white brethren even though they’d been “let off the hook” so many more times in the past. I have absolutely no empirical evidence for this claim beyond my own observations of parenting and conversations I’ve had with teachers in similar disciplinary situations. I don’t even think that it’s necessarily true that minorities DO have harsher penalties. I have done quite a bit of looking to confirm this claim and have not seen anything. It appears to be another statistical trick that the left pull with anything (see: Wage Gap). But, if it were the case, I’d like to put forth my own circular logic to explain it. 🙂 ]
Back to the issue, for activists to claim racism in policing at the individual level (which would be different than ‘institutional racism’) they would be making a claim that the profession that draws more minority employees than most other professions has an epidemic of attracting self-hating minorities. This is idiocy. Given that police operate with a level of autonomy, however slight it might be, the level of coercion necessary for a man to ruin another man’s life on the basis of skin color, alone, when he shares that skin color, is much more than any police sergeant possesses.
2. And the second issue I find with the claim is the conspiracy it suggests when it comes to violent crime; particularly murder. Because, when it comes to violent crime, the claim would be suggesting a conspiracy of institutional racism so vast as to attribute widespread violent crime to innocent minorities. And in the year of our lord, 2022, a conspiracy like this would be so incredibly easy to expose.
Now, I know this is employing the same “well if it’s true, we’d know about it” fallacy that so many lazy people use to avoid thinking (and the reason for much of our strife). And, conversely, I know that ignoring this seemingly logical thought is the basis for all available conspiracy theories. But let me try to explain why this is different. There’s not enough makeup in the world to cover up a gunshot wound, a stabbing, or make a dead body alive again.
When it comes to violent crime, police departments are unable to tell a family that lost a loved one that they did not lose a loved one. Or tell a gunshot victim that the extra hole in their body is just their imagination. The level of conspiracy that would need to be involved for violent crime statistics to be fraudulent would need to involve everyone in the country. If police were really “covering up” or “exaggerating” violent crime statistics, is there a person alive in this country that doesn’t think an activist lawyer would’ve exposed it by now? It would be easy to do. Look at the reported numbers for any precinct and track down those familiar with the victims. An “audit” if you will. Easy peasy.
So, I do not buy it. Neither statistically, nor anecdotally, have I ever gotten the sense that there are a bunch of John Coffeys (The Green Mile) occupying our prison system. Especially, given that the vast majority of victims of minority crimes are of the same race.
3. And this leads into my 3rd, and final, issue with the claim. This is another rebuttal of the “institutional racism leads to the over-incarceration of minorities for non-violent crimes” crowd. Even if I were to go the lazy route and grant that maybe you have a point. Hollywood has been telling me about this my whole life, and they’re really smart people, so maybe I’ll consider it. I would ask for more numbers. Consistent with my theory above, I would need to see more than, simply, the sentencing statistics.
Because everyone alive over the age of 6 knows that every situation is different. Sentences are not generated from a computer. We have judges and courtrooms and juries for a reason. Perpetrators are given the opportunity to present their case. Not only are they given the chance to argue their innocence, but in cases where guilt is not in question, they have the dual purpose of demonstrating any remorse or contrition. We all know this. Are we to ignore the defendant that Motherf*&ks the judge, the jury, and everyone he’s ever known? Are we to read a transcript of a defendant’s statement on a piece of paper and ignore the fact that they are so obviously lying if we were to see them deliver it in person? I have it on good authority that there is a pretty heavy correlation between lying, and people seeking to avoid punishment. Isn’t this what judges and juries are for? Is every judge and jury in the country also racist? If so, take it up with them, not the police. I’ve seen enough Law and Order to know that in the criminal justice system, the people are represented by 2 separate, yet equally important groups; the police who investigate crime, and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders (Yes, that’s all from memory). So, no, if we are to establish a claim of “racism in policing,” you showing me that Juan got a 6 month sentence for a crime that Chad got off on, is not going to convince me.
So, what other statistics could we look at that might convince me? Not that the above mentioned stats would have absolutely no sway with me, (I would definitely take it into consideration), but there would need to be more. Given my above-mentioned belief that violent crime statistics would be considerably harder to forge, what if we compared the demographic breakdown of violent crime with that of non-violent crime? If the claim is that all races commit the same rates of crime, yet minorities are over-charged when it comes to non-violent crimes, it seems that we would be able to see that disparity when we compare it to violent crimes. Again, it’d be a lot harder for Officer Fife to fake a murder or shooting than to convince us that a perp showed no remorse for his drunk driving offense.
Surely, you already know where I’m going with this. When we compare the demographic breakdowns of the prison population between violent and non-violent crimes, we see that they are about the same. So, the defender of the institutional racism claim would, now, need to include both categories in defense of his stance. This becomes an 1100 pound-elephant that all but crushes the stance. His only way to withstand the weight, again, would be to retreat into conspiracy. A conspiracy so vast and prevalent as to, surely, never be provable. For, a conspiracy that is sophisticated enough to continue for so long, with so many moving parts, would surely have thought through every possible tactic of concealment; never to be exposed by anyone other than God, himself (herself, zeself, zirself).
And this is, possibly, the birthplace of Critical Race Theory. Afterall, necessity is the mother of invention. The necessity for a circular theory to accompany their other circular theory on ‘racism in policing’ could, very well, have led to this cottage industry of race hustlers who veil their evil in compassion and destroy everything they touch.
And, finally, for the slightly-less-lazy thinkers out there that say “Ok, well maybe the police aren’t racist, but we have too many people locked up,” my question to them would be “Ok, how many should there be?”
Like, how many people do we expect to be criminals? Presumably, as long as there have been human beings on the planet, there have been a certain section of those humans hell-bent on destruction, right? We accept that evil exists, don’t we? Even the purest of minds can be polluted to the point of permanent removal from society, no? And how many of those people can we expect to live amongst us; those people that will always take advantage of anyone or anything around them to the detriment of that person or thing in complete service to themselves, up to and including murder? Or, even, how many actually enjoy it? Derive pleasure from their anti-social behavior? Seriously, what’s the number? I’m a bit pessimistic, maybe, because I’d have no problem believing that 1 in 10 or 1 in 15 people have the propensity to go down that road. The best place for us, and these people, is behind bars. And I mean that. For the anti-social among us, a life of isolation can, often, be a God-send.
But let’s agree that my pessimistic numbers are just that; pessimistic. Surely, not 1 in 15 people are the type that would ever need to be separated from society for any significant amount of time. Ok, so what’s more realistic? 1 in 50? How bout 1 in 75? Surely, we could fathom that 1 in 75 people would have the predilection toward destructive behavior, warranting a separation from the general public, right? At least for some period of time. I mean, man is fallen. There is evil in the world. Is 1 in 75 too much? Could I get you to agree to 1 in 100?
Well, the number of people we are continuously beat over the head with is “2 million people in prison.” This is the great tragedy that requires “something must be done.” And, in a country of about 260 million adults, this comes out to .75% of the population; 1 in 135. 1 in 135 people may do time at some point in their lives in this country. The majority will live the majority of their lives outside prison and will die at home. Do we really believe that there isn’t more than 1 in 135 people that may go down a criminal path requiring correction in our country? IDK, I’ve already established that I’m a skeptic, so you know my answer. So, to put you out of your misery, I will conclude my rant. The very simple purpose of such a piece is to suggest that, when dealing with the “We Need Criminal Justice Reform” crowd, perhaps we shouldn’t overlook and dismiss one, very obvious response. “Maybe…but maybe we don’t?”
AgingMillenial 