What if we actually got 'tough on crime?' LZ Granderson in the LA Times, today. [View all]

[CaliforniaPeggy]

We have one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. One of the largest police forces. We have more guns than people. And yet, Americans are still scared.

Crime. Again.

This is not a rant about defunding the police or freeing people who have broken serious laws. This is about being “tough on crime,” which Americans are not. We just like to say that we are. But history shows we’re tough only on criminals.

~snip~

We’re not “tough on crime.” We’re tough on people who are vulnerable. Usually poor. Disproportionately Black and brown. Voiceless. We tell ourselves we’re tough on crime, but there are cities that have outlawed giving food to homeless people. How exactly are we defining “crime” if that’s an infraction?

~snip~

And just as we did in the ’70s and ’80s, we’re having a national conversation about being tough on crime through a lens that ignores the policies that foster crime and, with it, mass incarceration.

~snip~

To be tough on crime would be to recognize that it’s no accident our prisons are disproportionately filled with our poor and most vulnerable. That was the design.


All of it at the link:

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-03-08/tough-on-crime-policies#:~:text=To%20be%20tough%20on%20crime%20would%20be%20to,being%20truly%20tough%20on%20crime%20would%20take%20work.