Glenn Loury Quotes
Never before has a supposedly free country denied basic liberty to so many of its citizens. In December 2006, some 2.25 million persons were being held in the nearly 5,000 prisons and jails that are scattered across America’s urban and rural landscapes…. On average, state inmates have fewer than 11 years of schooling. They are also vastly disproportionately black and brown.
Glenn C. Loury, Economist, “Why Are So Many Americans in Prison?” Boston Review, July / August, 2007
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This quotation is surprising to many because the National Association of Evangelicals is a very conservative organization which is usually at the right wing of political and social issues. However, religions are generally more complex with nuanced positions compared to political parties. On the issue of Prisons, the National Association of Evangelicals is at the left wing of the political spectrum.
There is a significant argument as to whether of not race should be used to try and predict the variables that will likely produce crimes. Some social scientists argue that virtually everything correlates with race {633357} and therefore the predictions are meaningless. Here, Kurtz argues that if you do not use race, since it does correlate with so much, then you might as well not try and determine the predictive factors of crime. Reality lies in the center, use race as one of the statistical variables but do not use it for profiling potential criminals and potential suspects unless there is observable and not deduced or inferred evidence of race in the crime.
The sheriff was responsible for the Cook County Jail. At the time of the interview, Dart had 2500 mentally ill people in his job, making the Cook County Jail the largest insane asylum in the country. The worst part about that situation was that the jail is in no position to provide proper diagnosis and treatment for the mentally ill.
The increase compared to the rest of the world really occurred in the 1980s when The War on Drugs began jailing drug users and dealers and that accounts for the major difference. The 3000 different federal crimes, if an accurate number, is all the more remarkable because in America, the major part of law enforcement is handled by the state and local governments.
Glenn Cartman Loury is an American economist, academic, and author. In 1982, at the age of 33, he became the first African American tenured professor of economics in the history of Harvard University. He is the Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences and Professor of Economics at Brown University.
