A lot is being made of the recent data that shows about 1 in 100 US citizens are in prison.  People are debating the pros and cons of this as if it’s some kind of issue that the government’s at fault here.  Folks, I’m here to tell ya, the only people at fault are the ones in prison.  Now, there are a hand full of prisoners I’m sure that aren’t supposed to be there, but I would guess the biggest majority are right where they belong.  The latest round of second-guessing is going on at the esteemed Volokh Conspiracy.  Orin looked at the raw numbers, Paul Cassell posted a chart that compares crime to prison populations.  There’s a correlation for sure.  However, a lot of the commenters came up with reasons why this simple correlation could be/had to be wrong.  As Paul noted, there’s a lot behind the numbers.  I agreed.  There’s one set of numbers I thought merited looking in this discussion as well.  Namely:

Year Death Row Murders Percent
1968 - 517  13800 4%
1969 - 575  14760 4%
1970 - 631  16000 4%
1971 - 642  17780 4%
1972 - 334  18670 2%
1973 - 134  19640 1%
1974 - 244  20710 1%
1975 - 488  20510 2%
1976 - 420  18780 2%
1977 - 423  19120 2%
1978 - 482  19560 2%
1979 - 539  21460 3%
1980 - 691  23040 3%
1981 - 856  22520 4%
1982 - 1,050  21010 5%
1983 - 1,209  19310 6%
1984 - 1,405  18690 8%
1985 - 1,591  18980 8%
1986 - 1,781  20613 9%
1987 - 1,984  20096 10%
1988 - 2,124  20680 10%
1989 - 2,250  21500 10%
1990 - 2,356  23440 10%
1991 - 2,482  24700 10%
1992 - 2,575  23760 11%
1993 - 2,716  24530 11%
1994 - 2,890  23330 12%
1995 - 3,054  21610 14%
1996 - 3,219  19650 16%
1997 - 3,335  18208 18%
1998 - 3,452  16914 20%
1999 - 3,527  15522 23%
2000 - 3,593  15586 23%
2001 - 3,581  16037 22%
2002 - 3,557  16229 22%
2003 - 3,374  16528 20%
2004 - 3,315  16148 21%
2005 - 3,254  16740 19%
2006 - 3,344  17034 20%

What this says is in 1968 there were 13,800 murders.  As a result, there were 517 people put on death row.  In 2006, there were 17,034 murders, with 3,334 people on death row.  Now, two things jump out at me real quick.  First of all, in 2006, 20% of all murderers were put on death row as opposed to 4% in 1968.  The simple math is that society’s not necessarily changed, as the murder rate has gone down substantially, but rather, our legal system has gotten better.  It takes a perfect argument to get a death penalty, there’s no room for error.  That folks is not a bad thing no matter how you look at it.  Secondly, in 1968 96% of people committing murder got away with it apparently.  Or, they got a sentence that allowed them to get back out eventually.  People can argue reform all they want, but if someone’s capable of murder, they’re always capable of murder.  Murder’s just not something most people do on a whim.  Nowadays, only 80% aren’t sentenced to death.  So, murder just being one example, I think part of what’s going on is the same number of people are committing crimes, or even less.  But, they’re going to prison more likely, and, in the worst cases, they’re going there for much longer periods of time, sometimes life.

Which leads me to the question of why it is that we, as a society, feel compelled that caging people up for eternity is not any more cruel and unusual than ending their life now.  The problem with the legal system that is compounding the problem today is we forced our legal system to enforce laws more stringently in the 80′s, but we didn’t make the hard decisions on what to do in the worst case scenarios.  Endless appeals and protests and stuff for convicted murders just keeps them in prison, and the prison population growing, for no real justifiable reason other than society deciding that dealing with them on their terms isn’t what’s morally acceptable.

Speed up the death penalty process and I’ll bet the population starts going down.  Right now, for most of these people, the punishment is worth the crime.  That’s just not right.

Tags: death-penalty