I say a few good things about Canada in the book, you know. Americans are weird, though. We refuse to look at other countries. Start with Canadians - I want to think you aren't that different, so why can't we do our incarceration policies more like Canada? If we still had a 1970 level of incarceration which was the same as Canada's then and now, I never would have written this.
Peter MoskosIf you're willing to give convicts time served and let them walk, why do you want to give them a criminal record? I mean, either they should be in jail, or be free. But it's all because of some internal bureaucratic stat about getting a felony conviction for the prosecutor. Everyone's got their own little game to play, but that prosecutorial part of it is not well known.
Peter MoskosWhen I talk to people the usual progression is, "Flogging's cruel and barbaric," moving very quickly to, "Only 10 lashes for five years?" Then I do worry, actually. On the one hand, once you start quibbling about the number of lashes, I've won. But on the other hand, people who say flogging's not cruel enough... I mean, well, what have we become? God forbid I wake up a couple years from now and we have even longer sentences and we flog people. I mean, then I might jump out a window.
Peter MoskosThese 2.3 million prisoners, somehow we've convinced ourselves that's normal and rational, more prisoners than soldiers, more prisoners than China, more than one per cent of the adult population, seven times the incarceration rate of Canada or any Western European country.
Peter MoskosI think there is a lot of crime caused by desperation, and it doesn't mean that people commit crime because they're poor, but certainly a lot of people who are poor commit crime and they might not if they weren't poor. You understand the difference there? That's not news, but it comes up when I hear people say poverty doesn't affect crime - that crime is still going down in America even though the economy is bad.
Peter Moskos