The continued narrative emanating from the prison and capital punishment abolition movements (marking this recent article from the Los Angeles Times) is that three-strikes legislation fills prisons and bad social conditions cause crime.
The first is true—and has resulted in crime rates dropping—but the second is not and continues to hamper rehabilitative efforts by diverting focus on the true cause of crime, that criminals choose to become criminals.
Granted, there are certain social, familial, psychological and physiological conditions from which many criminals tend to come, though many within the same conditions do not choose to become criminals, so we are left with the one indisputable fact, crime is a matter of individual choice.
The best work in the arena of crime causation over the past several decades has been that done by James Q. Wilson and his collaborators, expressed magisterially in his two major works, as the co-author of Crime & Human Nature (1985) & as co-editor of Crime & Public Policy (2011).
Lampstand Foundation website, http://www.lampstandfoundation.org/
"The sinner is at the very heart of Christianity. Nobody is so competent as the sinner in matters of Christianity. Nobody, except the saint." Charles Peguy (1873-1914)
About
- David H. Lukenbill
- I am a California native, married, we have one daughter and live close to the American River with two cats and all the wild critters we can feed. I am a management consultant to nonprofit organizations and have an Associates of Arts degree in Administration of Justice from Sacramento City College, a Bachelor of Science degree in Organizational Behavior from the University of San Francisco and a Master of Public Administration degree, also from the University of San Francisco.