On Crime: More jails don’t cut crime–must address poverty instead
Russell G. Oswald, Commission of Corrections of NY State, pinpointed the problem: “Society has done damn little in ending poverty illiteracy that provide the seeds of unrest and problems that lead people to prisons.”
The lesson is clear. More police, more jails, more tough talk will not help. None of these traditionally instinctive reactions to crime can stem the rising tide. So long as injustice and inequity in larger society exist on the gross scale that they do today, all the reasoning and rhetoric and police clubs in the world will not stop the have-nots from going after the goods they seek through the only avenue they feel is open to them–crime. So long as we delay the basic reforms, that long will our cities continue to half-exist, in fear, behind locked doors.
Source: Citizen Power, by Sen. Mike Gravel, p.196-197 Jan 1, 1972
On Crime: Stop punishment for victimless crimes: drugs, sex & gambling
Because so much crime is the product of people who were in prison, an obvious means of reducing crime is to drastically reduce our prison population. That can be done, at no danger to society, almost overnight. How? By eliminating a whole host of common social activities from the law’s list of “crimes.”
Common activities for which we now punish people–so-called “victimless-crimes” because they affect no one but the participant–include drinking, prostitution, gambling, homosexuality, & use of certain drugs. What is the point of jailing people for these practices? What more towering hypocrisy, what more potent breeder of total disrespect for the law can there be than these “crimes,” which are practiced by millions of citizens, but for which only a few are singled out for punishment?
Victimless crimes are a peril to our health only in so far as they are classified as crimes. Some 51% of criminal arrests in 1970 were for victimless crimes. We could very nearly empty our jails by abolishing them.
Source: Citizen Power, by Sen. Mike Gravel, p.214-215 Jan 1, 1972
Since Sen. Mike Gravel made these quotes in 1972, the per capita rate of incarceration, accompanied by corresponding increases in government spending, has gone up by a factor of SEVEN without diminishing the crime rate. These quotes were phrophetic and probably also predictive of future trends. We must learn from history!