George Will v. Sentencing Project

Last Sunday George Will, the bowtie-wearing dean of conservative punditry, published an op-ed in the Washington Post called “More Prisons, Less Crime.” In the piece Will gave prominent attention to his colleagues and fellow travelers Heather Macdonald and James Q. Wilson, citing at length their contention that the record-high level of incarceration in the United States has been beneficial. “For many reasons, including better policing and more incarceration, Americans feel, and are, safer,” he wrote. It was a scattered argument without much substance, but what was most disturbing was the mendacious cherry-picking of data to support the ideological thrust of his argument–which rationalizes increased incarceration and totally dismisses the strong taint of racism in current sentencing policy. Now the Sentencing Project has responded with a welcome corrective, “Do More Prisoners Equal Less Crime?” which dismantles Will’s column point by point to advance a more reality-based take on the relationship between incarceration and crime rates, and on the racist underpinnings of the bloated American prison system.