Prisons and Stimulus: Perfect Together

The recent murder of four Oakland, CA police officers by a man wanted for violating his parole highlights a problem that is likely to grow with increased Democratic control of government.

The left has been fighting for years to reduce the prison population in the U.S. by various means, including arguing that prisons are overcrowded. One "success" of such efforts has resulted in a panel of federal judges tentatively ordering California to release 50,000 prisoners, over one-third of the total, due to concerns over-crowding has led to a lower quality of medical care.

One of the key factors that has reduced crime in America in the past 15 years has been the greater number of criminals behind bars. If a criminal is in jail, he isn't committing crimes against the broader population. It's simple: release criminals, increase crime.

So here is a solution: build more prisons. The government should do that anyway, good times or bad, to enable it to carry out its fundamental job of protecting us.

But with all of this "stimulus" money sloshing around, such construction activity would be a form of "stimulus" that would be useful, by keeping criminals behind bars.

Funny how that kind of spending didn't get increased, to my knowledge.

Along with the lack of increased military spending (see here), the lack of additional spending on prisons to prevent criminals from being released early illustrates perfectly that the Democrats "stimulus" plan is really about funding its pet social and welfare causes.

The proper role of government is to protect citizens from criminals and foreign threats. The Democrats are defaulting on their responsibility to do just that, while focusing on wealth redistribution and "saving" the environment.