America’s incarceration rate is in decline

Does that mean we can stop keeping mouth wash and deodorant behind lock and key on store shelves and resume locking up the criminals making messes of our cities?

It's unclear if the decline in prisoners stems from a decline in crime. While I generally believe the statistics that violent crime has decreased, it may be the case that the judicial system and even the government in general just have no enthusiasm for prosecuting or punishing it.

In short, no, they won't stop locking it up. They wouldn't even if there was a decline in petty crime... those locks are so that they can staff the store with 2 people instead of 5.

I live in a deep Red Bible thumping, back the blue, law and order county / state.

About 7 years ago a former schoolmate of mine shot a man 6 times over a bad drug deal, fled the state to California. He was captured by the US Marshal and brought back to the county jail where he bonded out after 3 month.

After his bonding out, he drove over to the victim’s parent’s house and performed a drive-by shooting, injuring none but did kill livestock.

He was arrested again, taken to the county jail, and bonded out after several months.

The issue finally reached a plea bargain, they dropped all charges related to both shooting, had him plead guilty to felony firearms charge, and gave him time served and 5 years probation.

This man is a grown adult with felony priors, and got a proverbial slap on the wrist. Never saw a day of state prison, likely never will.

If this is how we treat serious violent crime, I’m not surprised in TFA at all.

There should be statutory limitations for prosecutors concerning the use of plea deals. No more than 1% of cases in any calendar year should be permitted to even offer plea deals, so that they use that tool sparingly and only when appropriate. If they waste it out of laziness or apathy, then the subsequent cases that year would have to be brought to trial.

This would cut down on alot of the bullshit (and not just for cases like the one you describe, but where plea bargaining is used to bully people into pleading guilty where they are not).

Most convictions are due to plea deals. If you limit that tool, people would simply have charges dropped due to Sixth Amendment violations and people languishing in prison awaiting trials. It would be gridlock.

"Plea bargaining accounts for almost 98 percent of federal convictions and 95 percent of state convictions in the United States."

https://legalknowledgebase.com/what-percentage-of-criminal-c...