The justice system's aversion to repeat offenders — not a rise in actual crime — feeds the prison-industrial complex, a new study has essentially found, as a record number of people receiving prison sentences have prior convictions.
Ohio State University sociologist Ryan King
examined 33 years of data from the
Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines Commission — around 355,000 felony convictions — and found despite the sharp decline in the crime rate since the mid-1990s, judges are often faced with repeat-offenders, whom they tend to sentence more harshly.
"The issue is that the average offender who appears before a judge for sentencing today has a much more extensive criminal record than they did in the past," noted King, a professor of sociology at OSU.
"It is much harder for judges not to give prison sentences to repeat offenders, so we have more convicted people going to prison."
Comment: Another sign that society is disintegrating.