Wow, Mitt Romney. Just wow. At a time when even many Republicans are pretending to care about mass incarceration, Romney instead attacked Hillary Clinton for saying that we need to "end the era of mass incarceration." In fact, he
denied that it's a reality:
I was concerned that her comments smacked of politicization of the terrible tragedies that are going on there. When she said we’re not going to have mass incarcerations in the future, what is she referring to? We don’t have mass incarcerations in America. Individuals are brought before tribunals, and they have counsel. They’re given certain rights. Are we not going to lock people up who commit crimes?
Mitt Romney is famously a business guy, so presumably he likes numbers and facts. Let's turn to
one very basic fact on incarceration in America.
That is mass. Politicians have to grapple with this, and there are two basic possibilities. One is that Americans are uniquely likely to commit crimes, that we are a nation of criminals, and that the only thing to do is to lock us up by the millions. The other is that the United States has different policies than other nations, that those policies produce higher incarceration rates (and possibly higher crime rates), and that we could change the policies. That we could make another choice and reduce prison populations without endangering ourselves. That just because there is a system in which there are tribunals and counsel and certain rights does not mean current incarceration rates in the U.S. represent true justice.