Thomas Sowell on crime

As always, an excellent piece by Sowell:

Do higher rates of imprisonment reduce crime? Is crime a result of poverty, unemployment, and the like? Are alternatives to incarceration more effective in preventing criminals from repeating their crimes?

Some people would hesitate to try to answer any of these questions before going through a lot of hard evidence and thinking it over very carefully.

But many on the left can answer immediately because they know what answers are already in vogue on the left -- and that the only reason others don't accept those answers is because they are behind the times or just hard-hearted people who want to punish. . . . .