THE SCRAPBOOK's e-mail inbox (scrapbook@weeklystandard.com) was filled to overflowing last week by readers calling attention to Fox Butterfield's New York Times article on incarceration rates in America. As longtime readers of this page know, this has become a regular event, rather like the return of the swallows to Capistrano.
Each time the Justice Department releases a study showing America's prison population increasing, Butterfield asks dumbfounded: How can this be? At a time when crime is decreasing! The possibility that more prisoners might mean less crime seems not to occur to him. Though there is progress on that front in his latest piece.
The August 10 headline, much to our delight, shows that tradition is alive and well at the Times: "Number in Prison Grows Despite Crime Reduction." It's a bit terse, perhaps; 1997's "Crime Keeps On Falling, but Prisons Keep On Filling" was more poetic; 1998's "Prison Population Growing Although Crime Rate Drops" was more scholarly sounding. (Last year's headline, though, was a complete dud: "Number of Inmates Reaches Record 1.8 Million.")
Since Butterfield doesn't hesitate to repeat himself, THE SCRAPBOOK will do the same. As we noted in 1998, "for most Americans, the dramatic drop in the nation's crime rate has been a piece of pure good news. But at the New York Times, it has caused deep intellectual puzzlement. After all, if you subscribe to the old-time liberal religion of 'root causes,' crime rates aren't supposed to go down until poverty and racism are eliminated, and the police have all been taught proper table manners. . . . The idea that locking 'em up might lower crime rates is not even entertained" at the Times.
But, as we said, there is progress, even at the Times. Deep down in this year's story, we find this concession to common sense: "One major issue that the Justice Department's study did not address was whether there was any relationship between growth in the incarceration rate and the drop in crime. Advocates of tougher prosecution and sentencing say the huge growth in imprisonment, with the incarceration rate quadrupling since 1980, has been largely responsible for the decrease in crime."
Well, there's still a bit of attitude there. But, hey -- Butterfield has finally noticed the crux of the issue he's been writing about. That's a start.