09-10-2016, 02:10 AM
![[Image: 400px-US_Adult_Incarceration_Rate_by_State.svg.png]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c4/US_Adult_Incarceration_Rate_by_State.svg/400px-US_Adult_Incarceration_Rate_by_State.svg.png)
Does anyone question that a high crime rate reflects such pathologies as under-education, poor economic opportunities, and general poverty? The only other imaginable correlation could be climate, with higher temperatures fostering more crime... it could not be that simple. Ethnic disparities? Those correlate again to poor social conditions.
Harsher courts and judges? The states in the darkest shades have some of the most active death rows in America... but if the death penalty serves as a deterrent to violent crime, then the connection must either be weak or even contrary to any reduction in violent crime.
Most criminals do their depredations locally. I doubt that Louisiana has a problem with out-of-state crooks coming to Louisiana for New Orleans jazz and Cajun cuisine, and then to commit some crime that results in a prison term at An-Gulag State Penitentiary.
It's unlikely to cconnect to
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.