Something in Iowa has gone dreadfully awry.According to this site, crime in Iowa quadrupled in practically every category between 1960 and 1975. What was the response? By the 1980s, people were demanding that more criminals be put away for longer terms.
At the least, something is dreadfully different than it used to be, and Iowa is a lesser place because of it.
The change isn't immediately apparent. It has occurred so gradually that nothing out of the ordinary seemed to be happening.
Perhaps that's the way it is with profound change. Everything seems normal until you look back over the decades and realize how different things are.
So it is with the way we keep putting more and more of our fellow Iowans behind bars for major portions of their lives...
...But the number [of people in prison] did grow, beginning in the 1980s. Iowa's population actually declined in that decade, but the number of Iowans incarcerated began to shoot up. By the mid-1990s, more than 6,000 Iowans were behind bars - triple the historical number.
The number keeps growing. Now, nearly 9,000 Iowans are in prison.
The result? A decline in crime in most categories! Burglaries, in particular, have dropped by almost 50% from 1980 to 2005.
Amazing how that correlates.
Doak points fingers at the emptying of mental institutions in the 1970s and 1980s. Well, whose bright idea was deinstitutionalization? Liberal crackpots and the trial lawyers who love them, that's who.
Doak also talks about all the people sentenced for drug-related offenses. Who was doing all the robbery, burglary, larceny, and other violent crimes? A lot of them were the same people who were dealing drugs or needed money in order to continue their addictions.
It's sad to read an old fart like Doak who just doesn't get it. Luckily, he's retired, so we don't have to hear about it as often.
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