California Ordered To Reduce Prison Population : NPR

In a course they evidently don’t require any longer—or a least not in California—we once learned that deviant conduct was a social, economic, and public, not an individual, moral, and private problem. Were this true, then the increase in California’s prison population past capacity would need to be treated by addressing the social, economic, and public changes that have resulted if not in increased criminal conduct—which is certainly open to question—but more criminal convictions.

Evidently, however, this is not a course taken either by Renee Montagne or by those whom she interviewed. Instead, Ms. Montagne and her sources trotted out the same old story-line which brackets the social, economic, and public causes for incarceration and instead focuses on the supposedly individual, moral, and private character of the problem.

Shame on Ms. Montagne. Shame on NPR.