When The Facts Conflict With Dogma

The Blogfather linked to this post yesterday about how puzzled journalists were about the declining violence in Iraq.

This reminded me a a story I read in the New York Times a few years ago. The Times' reporters found it confusing that America could simultaneously have a declining crime rate and a high incarceration rate.

In seeking to explain the paradox of a falling crime rate but a rising prison population, Mr. Beck pointed out that F.B.I. statistics showed that from 1994 to 2003 there was a 16 percent drop in arrests for violent crime, including a 36 percent decrease in arrests for murder and a 25 percent decrease in arrests for robbery.

But the tough new sentencing laws led to a growth in inmates being sent to prison, from 522,000 in 1995 to 615,400 in 2002, the report said.

Similarly, the report found that the average time served by prison inmates rose from 23 months in 1995 to 30 months in 2001.

Among the new measures were mandatory minimum sentencing laws, which required inmates to serve a specified proportion of their time behind bars; truth-in-sentencing laws, which required an inmate to actually serve the time he was sentenced to; and a variety of three-strikes laws increasing the penalties for repeat offenders.

Clearly the New York Times could not grasp the simple fact that bad guys in jail prevents them from committing crimes. Similarly the today's news media do not understand that dead terrorists commit no violence.