The politicians know that the media can take one criminal act and magnify it to the most important incident of the decade.

The most prominent example of this was the Polly Klaas murder in California in the early 90s. This one criminal act was magnified to the level of a major terrorist attack and kicked off three strikes and a major prison building and imprisonment boom that lasted two decades. It also led to a wave of "stranger danger" paranoia that ended the era when kids could go outside all by themselves and maybe even ride their bikes around the neighborhood.

Frankly, I blame the media for the whole prison thing. They don't look at statistics and instead blow everything totally out of proportion and make everybody paranoid. Usually there is a paper of record like the NYT or LA times that throws the pitch with some hugely blown out of proportion story and then it gets repeated by the rest of the media and then the politicians hit the pitched story with some ridiculously overreaching and draconian laws. For example there was a recent "Bitcoin kills children" story about kids dying from drugs they bought on the Internet with Bitcoin and voila there's an anti-bitcoin bill pulled out of the desk drawer and put on the agenda by the end of the week.

The media are responding to their own incentives, you might as well pass the blame again onto the readers/watchers. It's a structural problem, no one group is to blame. I'd say one major factor is the US seems to be mostly devoid of a shame/duty based culture. People need to be driven to act within generalizable moral codes across the whole society. The idea that if the market supports it and it is within the law then it is beyond criticism is in my opinion not sustainable.

The newspaper business has been losing a lot of money lately. They are just turning into toys for people who want to set the national agenda. Their value as propaganda and PR outlets vastly outweighs their value as subscription collecting or advertising venues. Advertisers will overpay for ads to get a good PR story anyway and with the enormous Web of interlocking ownership these days it's pretty easy to hide the connections.

Yeah but this isn't a new problem, I remember the whole Polly Klaas thing well, and if you look into history it's abundantly clear that this sort of sensationalism has long been a fixture of media. I was visiting the Museum of Oakland not too long ago and was struck by a letter written in the 19th century from a new arrival observing that 'the canard [a french term for a bullshit news article] is a fixture in American journalism...'

I'm not ascribing all responsibility to the media, though - it's one factor among many. I somewhat agree with the poster above about the US not having the same sort of shame/duty culture that prevails in the EU, and suggest that to some extent this derives from the coincidence of different philosophical and social cultural traditions in the US.

> A politican voting to reform a clearly broken prison system faces tons of risks to their career.

Can you say more about this? It sounds like you think that's normal in your community, to think that way. That's not how I hear the people around me talking about prison. I think most of us would support a candidate who talked about rehabilitation.

I worry that by trotting out this old meme as if it were an permanent fixture of our political system that you are actually strengthening it.

Part of the problem is that even thought a lot of people generally agree that we are too harsh on criminals, they don't stick to that viewpoint when the rubber meets the road during situations they care about.

People who are liberal on sentencing get angry if short sentences are handed down in rape or financial crime cases.

There's an appropriate amount of punishment. It's too much for a joint and too little for the people who broke the economy.

This is not a contradiction or indication of hypocrisy.

If it's still about punishment, it's still coming from the wrong place, imo. Furthermore, everyone will have different opinions on which crimes are more heinous than others.

Your last paragraph made me smile at the idea of having prisons filled with bankers instead of drug dealers. Do your point is certainly valid.

absolute/relative

In my experience, the divide is similar to the War on Drugs. Most young people understand that it was a poor concept, initiated by racists, from the start. Many old people are still tethered to the propaganda of the past, so there are politicians that can just continue that line of thinking. As long as the current generation is in power (Boomers), we won't see much change for the better.

Obv not all Boomers are this way - to be clear, just way too many.

Most of the people I know aren't swayed by the "tough on crime" narrative. Certainly not me. But then again, I live in a techno-liberal-intellectual bubble. I believe this "punish those who do wrong" mentality (which is understandable on the face of it) is definitely built into the conservative wing of American politics.

Public opinion is swayed at a very superficial level. Emotional stories about convicts going free or people getting killed are always going to have a more substantial impact. Especially compared to mundane stores on successful prison reform -- 10% shorter prison sentences? 5% higher rehab rate? This guy who murdered people has a stable construction job now? Ignore the ideology, I think the optics of prison reform give us this unequal incentive structure.

The only thing you gotta look at to confirm this is how elected judges rule when election time comes up. They get a lot tougher on crime.

Willie Horton was used in this way to have an incredible negative impact on the Dukakis campaign in 1998. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Horton

This is why we have the Fourth Estate. Politicians won't vote to reform our prison system until that system's flaws and abuses and inefficiencies are made into a big public issue. We need more reporters and more columnists publishing more stories about this topic.

This is a civil rights issue, and it should be written about as such.

The fourth estate is owned by a few rich men.

The solution is to push through the correct solution by playing the exact same game. Politicians interested in reform are for the most part far too quiet. Every time there is a violent crime committed by an ex-convict they need to use that politically to absolutely slam the criminal justice system until something is done. "Tough on the crime system" is just as good as "Tough on crime" if you're loud and obnoxious enough whenever a camera is put in your face.

Oklahoma just passed a ballet referendum to scale back punishments for drug related and petty crimes. The state legislature has basically overruled a clear majority of the vote at the behest of the public unions who are deeply invested in maintaining the jobs of their members and damn the cost in ruined lives.

What is wrong with being "soft on crime"?

being though on crime clearly does not work

The problem is that the general population is very removed from the prison system and inmates in general so they don't see the long-term effects. So when someone is 'locked up' for a long time they view that as redemption for their or someone else's suffering. So being 'soft on crime' would be viewed as taking away those victims vindication. (I'm not saying I agree with this, but I have just noticed through general conversation that people want criminals locked up for a long time. It is very short sighted and vengeful if you ask me.)

The problem isn't so much that the general population is so far removed, it's that the victims are so closely connected.

Why's an outsider gonna stand up for a rapist or a murderer when they've got their own problems and the victims will never forget nor will they stand down. You can't get upset at the victims for that, it's very natural.

I have empathy for some prisoners and a family member was according to him unfairly convicted (he ended up dying in prison), but I've also had family members murdered and sexually assaulted. As far as I'm concerned the people who did those things took innocence and ruined lives it's hard to feel too sorry for those actors when their lives are ruined, too.

That might be a little vindictive, but you can never give victims back their peace nor their normal lives and normal people don't commit heinous crimes.

Yes, they do.

A moment of too much passion, a stupid firstandlast time drug trip, money troubles and "normal people"-addictions- yes, perfectly normal people commit perfectly normal crimes. All the time. Some of them even have company.

Normal crime is just not reported, because nobody wants to hear about how the neighbourhood they moved too- is not so nice after all.

"tough on crime" is an election campaign strategy more than anything else.