"Catch And Release" Is A Truly Dumb Policy That Makes Zero Sense

"Catch and release" of criminals is literally one of the very dumbest policies in all of recorded history, right up there with "defund the police" and similar half-baked ideas.  And the results of such no-accountability de facto tacit decriminalization of crimes big and small have sadly been predictable.

Only the most dyed-in-the-wool, super left-brained (and hare-brained), out-of-touch, ivory-tower academics and their acolytes could possibly think that such a real-life, literal "get out of jail free card" is somehow a good idea on balance.  People can argue "root cause theory" till they are blue in the face, but that does NOT somehow negate the non-root causes that clearly need to be tackled as well.  It's NOT an either/or situation, and clearly most of the root causes of crime are much harder and slower to solve.  Forest, meet trees.  And map, meet territory. 

Also, as much as we loathe victimless crime laws, per the late, great Peter McWilliams, author of Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do:  The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in Our Free Society, that does NOT somehow imply a lax attitude towards real crimes (whether big or small, violent or not) that objectively harm (or unduly endanger) the person or property of nonconsenting others, or that otherwise violate the civil or human rights of others.  In other words, "Get tough on REAL crime" should really be the appropriate slogan here, something even the Libertarian Party has long agreed with.

(That is precisely where we at the TSAP decidedly part ways with the late criminologist James Q. Wilson, the main proponent of the "broken windows" theory, who we otherwise at least partially agree with.  In any case, the "broken windows" theory was ultimately inspired by the late sociologist Jane Jacobs.)

The TSAP has long compiled a list of promising ideas called "Smart On Crime", that should be food for thought indeed.  And guess what it does NOT include?  Catch and release, defund the police, or anything of the sort.  Focused deterrence actually does work, and these latest silly "new" (old) fads only monkeywrench and vitiate such a proven crime-fighting strategy. 

The one major city that bucked the disastrous trend recently was Dallas, Texas.  And not only did they NOT defund the police, they actually increased the use of smart policing tactics to target violent and serious crime.  And whaddya know, it worked.  So let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater now!

There is a strong inverse correlation between police numbers and crime.  Gee, who woulda thunk it?  In other news, water is wet, and the sun rises in the east.

And while the "deterrence" effect (whether general or specific) of incarceration is fairly weak, the "incapacitation" effect on crime is still fairly strong nonetheless, as Wilson famously noted long ago.  Meanwhile, it has long been known that the swiftness and certainty of punishment is far more important than severity is for effective deterrence.

And yes, the age-old correlation between poverty and crime, and also inequality and crime, is just as strong today as it has ever been.  Marcus Aurelius was right about that, both back then and now: "poverty is the mother of crime," and inequality is not far behind.  In the long run, any solutions that don't address poverty and inequality are simply not real solutions.  We certainly need a much better social welfare state, UBI, etc. among other things, to tackle that.  And of course, we must continue getting the lead out as well to further take a bite out of crime.

For example, street gangs (yes, even in today's flavor of Gangland Chicago) can be at least temporarily extirpated from an area by going RICO on them, that is, applying that law to them and vigorously enforcing it.  Many states, including Illinois, have their very own RICO laws as well, so they can do so even without any federal help.  However, such gangs will ultimately return and rise again if we don't also stamp out the conditions that cause such gangs in the first place.

That said, once again, it is not only root (or distal) causes that we should tackle, but also branch (or proximal) causes as well, as in practice the latter causes often get in the way of actually solving the former.  It's not either-or, and we can walk and chew gum at the same time.  Upstream AND downstream are the both important.  So what are we waiting for?

UPDATE:  The term "anarcho-tyranny" comes to mind.  While that term was (unfortunately) apparently coined, or at least popularized, by an infamous white supremacist guy back in the 1990s, and while I really don't like to willingly use the lingo of bigots of any kind, there is nonetheless no more suitable term than that for the current sorry state of affairs.  So, let's reclaim it for ourselves so the racists don't have exclusive use of such a useful term.  In Orwell's dystopian novel 1984, keep in mind that there was a "vast amount of criminality" that was openly tolerated by the dictatorship, ironically enough, so anarchy and tyranny are NOT mutually exclusive like many may think.  Dictatorships, tyrannies, and oligarchies can and do indeed exist without the rule of law.  It is a mutually-reinforcing textbook example of "Problem, Reaction, Solution".  And clearly, tyranny is always whimsical in practice. 

More Guns, Less Crime? Well, Not Exactly....

In the wake of so many recent mass shootings, the TSAP has gradually shifted our position on guns towards favoring more gun control than in the past.  But what about the old standby argument that "more guns = less crime", as John Lott's famous 1997 study argued and the gun lobby just luurrrves to parrot to this day?

Well, it turns out that more recent research has thoroughly debunked that zombie idea that just doesn't seem to want to die already.  To wit, the best studies on the matter show either no significant effect either way or even an increase in violent crime correlated with right-to-carry laws.  And tighter gun laws in general--surprise, surprise--are in fact also correlated with fewer gun deaths in general as well.   As for the old chestnut about self-defense, it turns out that having a gun in the house actually makes its occupants statistically LESS safe on balance.  While it is true that correlation does not prove causation, such correlations still robustly hold up after numerous variables are controlled for and in a variety of statistical models, and clearly lean in the opposite direction as Lott's discredited, outdated, and now-a-radical-outlier study does.  These facts dovetail nicely with well-known international evidence as well.

Ok, you ask, but then why did violent crime, including firearm homicides, drop in states that passed right-to-carry laws?  Well, it dropped in all states for a variety of unrelated reasons, but it did not drop evenly:  states that did not loosen their gun laws in fact saw much larger decreases in violent crime compared with the states that did loosen theirs.  And gun ownership rates actually dropped during the period of decreasing gun violence, which means a positive correlation between gun ownership and violence.   Thus, we see that Lott's whole thesis was based on nothing more than a statistical mirage all along.

So, in other words, the overwhelming weight of the evidence strongly suggests that "more guns = more crime" is true, all else being equal.  We at the TSAP do apologize for also mindlessly parroting the now-debunked opposite theory for so long.  While we were never in league with the NRA or took even one penny from the gun lobby, we were nonetheless unwittingly acting as fellow-travelers for them on purely libertarian and individualistic grounds.  And we now realize what a grave error that has been, all because of--dare we say--JUNK SCIENCE.  I mean, what else would you call a specious "study" that looks good at first, yet is later revealed to be not only inaccurate, but in fact virtually 100% wrong?

While we still support the Second Amendment, of course, it would seem that now our favorite part is where it says "well-regulated".  Yes, really.  Too bad the NRA and their bought-and-paid-for politicians can't seem to read the first half of the freaking sentence!   But the gun lobby and their lackeys aren't really well known for nuance, to put it mildly.

More Guns, Less Crime in 2009

Further proof that gun ownership tends to reduce crime rather than increase it is available in last year's crime statistics.  Many people were terrified that Obama would take away their guns, so when he was elected in 2008, they went on an immediate gun-buying spree.  The number of concealed-carry permits rose as well. 

Results?  There was a notable decrease in murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, and property crime in 2009 despite the severe recession.  Usually, crime goes up during recessions.  Also, growth in the prison population has slowed to a trickle after more than three straight decades of skyrocketing.  While correlation alone cannot prove causality, it is now harder than ever to still cling to the outdated pseudoliberal notion that guns are inherently evil and cause more crime.

Fully upholding the right to bear arms, as guaranteed in the Second Amendment, is not some wingnut fringe idea, but rather part of the True Spirit of America.  It amazes me to no end that people who call themselves "liberals" would be against this kind of liberty.  For once that is taken away, all rights are up for grabs by the state.