George Will is too smart to write a column like that published on Sunday, “More Prisons, Less Crime.” He is the writer who once observed that policymakers could – but wisely wouldn’t - reduce 40 percent of auto accidents by banning left hand turns. Yet, when it comes to mass incarceration, Will’s appreciation for nuance is absent. Instead, he concludes that imprisoning one in 100 adults, including one in nine young black men, is worth it because Americans feel safer.
Dismissing the growing chorus of concerns about mass incarceration, Will cites a study that asserts only career criminals are jailed. In fact, more than half of all federal prisoners are incarcerated on a drug charge (53 percent) while the number of drug offenders in state prisons has increased 13-fold since 1980. Many are low-level actors in the drug trade without prior records who were either unaware or undeterred by stiff penalties.
Will knows this. In a column published at the height of the War on Drugs, Will described an undercover drug operation in Miami. Interviewing the busted buyers, Will witnessed “the limits of deterrence. Deterrence depends on a degree of rationality. But some customers have minds hopelessly clouded by addiction…” (“Slow-Motion Death in Miami,” Washington Post, 3/27/89).
That was then. On Sunday, Will approvingly quoted James Q. Wilson for the disturbingly broad conclusion: “Deterrence works.” While some punishment can help deter crime, punishment must be proportionate to the harm caused. Locking up low-level drug offenders for lengthy, mandatory sentences might make some feel safe, but as a policy matter, it is as nonsensical as outlawing left hand turns.
Julie Stewart
President, Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM)