JOURNAL: PRISON STATISTICS SHOW CRACKDOWN IS WORKING

THE CROWD that feels that it's cruel and mean-spirited to put
criminals in jail has been moaning for years about recent "get-tough"
laws, things such as "three strikes, you're out." They have seized
upon the booming prison population as "evidence" that the crackdown
is misguided, insisting that if it continues, the need for new
lockups will outstrip the nation's ability to pay for them.

Serious people knew this wouldn't happen, and this week the facts
began to put the lie to the claim. The U.S. Bureau of Justice
Statistics reports that the rise in prison inmates slowed in 2000,
and actually declined in the latter half of the year.

This doesn't necessarily mean the curve is going to turn sharply
downward --- there are still plenty of bad people in the world ---
but it does indicate there is a finite number. "It is stability,"
said statistician Allen Beck, one of the authors of the study.

We're pleased that the increase has leveled off. We've never liked
spending billions on prisons, but the nation had to build enough to
protect society.

We also believe the slowdown shows the wisdom of the determination to
fight crime with the gloves off --- even though the folks who feel
prisoners' pain still don't seem to get it. A New York Times article,
for instance, seemed to find it ironic that the prison population
rose dramatically in the 1990s, "even growing each year . . . as
crime dropped." A lot of people just can't understand that criminals
in jail can't go around committing crimes; the declining crime rate
of the '90s had several causes, but the increased emphasis on tougher
enforcement and longer sentences is an undeniable one.

The report brought other agenda-seekers out of the woodwork, too,
seeking one more red herring in their efforts to make life easier for
people who are "legally challenged."

Those who think drugs aren't really all that bad leaped to the
explanation that the prison population leveled off because some
states are taking a softer line on drug users, providing treatment
instead of incarceration. Some are doing that, but the BJS report
makes it clear that it wasn't drug offenders who were driving the
increases of the past decade. "As a percentage of the total growth,
violent offenders accounted for 51 percent of the growth; drug
offenders 20 percent; property offenders 14 percent; and public-order
offenders 15 percent."

Those with racial agendas noted the report's finding that blacks made
up 46.2 percent of inmates at the end of last year, even though just
12 percent of the U.S. population is African-American. This renewed
complaints that minorities are "disproportionately" put behind bars
ignoring the fact that imprisonment rates should be
"proportionate" to the number of criminal offenders, not to the total
population of people, most of whom are law-abiding.

We don't think there's any way to know whether there are "too many"
people in prison today, but there surely were too few there 10 or 15
years ago. Locking up more of the bad guys has made America a safer
and better place. We hope this report indicates that we've got most
of them where they belong --- but if not, we can make some more room.