Incarceration rate=bias?
A new report from the excellent Sentencing Project offers more evidence of a probable institutional bias against African American and Hispanic citizens in terms of sentencing policies and public defense. Conservatives will argue that higher rates of criminal conduct is to blame for these by now well-documented racial disparities in incarceration but adequate defense, how people are charged, and how they are treated at sentencing make their own contribution to these high rates of jail time and longer periods of incarceration that are having a terrible impact on specific U.S. communities.
Read more about it at our beloved sister site, Salt of the Earth
posted by Kevin Clarke @ 1:32 PM
6 Comments
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6 Comments:
What is the reason to use the word "conservatives"? Do you understand what a liberal and conservative actually is? You just want to create a type of person to attack and then you'll just go ahead and call them "conservative". I am not a conservative or am I defending "conservatives". It's just you make a claim that you made up and throw on some meaningless title as a way to attack people. Why don't you edit that out of your blog and stop spreading ignorance by using these terms which you don't understand the meaning of.
In what way is anyone under attack in this short paragraph? "Conservative" and "liberal" are well-established terms in U.S. political discourse and a useful shorthand for same. I'd appreciate it if all visitors keep a civil tone in the give-and-take feature offered by blogger.
Please explain why so called conservatives would argue from a conservative ideology for the point you claimed they would argue for.
The issue you are talking about has nothing to do with conservative/liberal.
Anon:
I don't think it is at all controversial to say that conservatives would seek to describe a social phenom, in this instance high incarceration rates, through the filter of individual choices. "Personal responsibility," after all, has been one of the primary tenets of contemporary Conservativism. I refer you to William Bennett's infamous 2005 comments on abortion within the African American community and crime rates for perhaps the most incendiary observations on this theme.
It's ashame that you are so narrow-minded, Kevin. A good Catholic should not adhere to the political division between liberal and conservative. The fact is that both the conservative and liberal political ideology are incompatible with Catholicism. You should shape all your political beliefs based on your Catholic faith, not just the ones that don't conflict with popular liberal ideas. You are no different than the neoconservatives.
Anon,
I really don't see how any of the previous exchange leads up to a personal attack on me for being "narrow-minded" or for calling my Christian formation so wholly into judgment on such flimsy evidence. It seems you came looking for a fight and decided to have one, regardless of what I posted. Sadly, we are far away from the topic that somehow inspired this off-roading into the nature of American conservativism and my many character flaws, so I invite you to share whatever thoughts you have on the Sentencing Project's report on incarceration rates in America.
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