COMMON-SENSE FORMULA ON CRIME

Though Americans should be proud of our nation's world-leader status
in many categories, the United States' No. 1 ranking in incarceration
rate is cause for continued concern -- particularly with that rate
continuing to rise. But before assuming that reducing that rate by
releasing convicted criminals would be a positive step, consider
another statistical trend: an extended decline in the rate of violent
crime. Common sense suggests that a higher incarceration rate helps
lower the violent-crime rate, which dropped 3.2 percent from 2002 to
2003, according to a preliminary FBI report.

Law-abiding citizens are
obviously at much lower risk from criminals who are in prison than from
criminals who are not. As U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft recently
put it, in comments quoted by The Associated Press: "It is no accident
that violent crime is at a 30-year low while prison population is up.
Violent and recidivist criminals are getting tough sentences while
law-abiding Americans are enjoying unprecedented safety."

That doesn't mean the rates of one inmate per every 75 male U.S.
residents, and 715 per 100,000 residents of both sexes, represent a
cause for celebration. Certainly those figures, recently released by
the Justice Department, demand fair consideration for sentencing-
reform proposals on alternative, non-prison punishments for
non-violent offenders. And the high recidivism rate of U.S. prisoners
shows that more should be done in rehabilitating criminals to break a
wasteful cycle that harms not just them and their primary victims but
our entire society.

However, our world-leading incarceration rate, while depressing, is
also a direct result of justified public demand for tougher sentences
that enhance public safety.

And our dropping violent-crime rate shows one predictable benefit of
this logical approach.