CRIME RATES GOVERNED BY THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE IN PRISON

‘Jimmy wasn’t able to burgle while he was in prison’

By Jeff ‘Paco’ Doyle

PACOVILLA Corrections blog
November 16, 2012

Now, Paco is no Nostradamus but I can predict with absolute certainty crime is up as a direct result of realignment and the general soft-on-crime parole policies of both the Schwarzenegger and Brown Administrations. I speak with the same degree of certainty when crediting the prison boom [of the 80s – 90s] with the crime drop. It’s based not upon statistics, crime analysis or rhetoric–It is a matter of elementary physics.

Matter cannot exist in two places simultaneously, super-colliders notwithstanding. Which is to say, people in prison cannot physically commit a crime in the community, cellphones notwithstanding.

Similarly, offenders not in prison can and do commit crimes in the community, multiple crimes, repeatedly.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Responding to Jeff on PACOVILLA, ‘FXSTC1’ said:

I started working the criminal justice system while in college as an intern in 1970. Went to work for Juvenile Probation In 1972. Started working the Adult system in 1979. I met an overwhelming number of my “clients” previously in Juvenile.

In 1983 I moved my family out of the crime ridden area where we lived and headed north. Went to work for their County Juvenile system for a while and then promoted to the Adult system. Began to see that it was the same there. Juveniles moving up to the adult system. Same knuckleheads I had dealt with before.

Started [as a parole agent] in 1987. My first assignment was back to where I used to live. Saw the same youngsters from way back when. Transferred back up north in 1988. Once again started seeing the same youngsters just different location. Finally retired in 2011 and saw the same until that last day.

What I am saying is that we were doing our job well when we were returning people at a high rate. They needed to be incarcerated. There is an incredible amount of people in California that are going to commit crimes no matter what and they are going to do it over and over again. Lock them up. Every one of them.