William J. Stuntz, Professor of Law at Harvard University and an Evangelical Christian, while writing about the fantasy world where intellectuals and Christians can come together, makes a valid point about crime and punishment, he writes:

One possible response is to ratchet up punishment for crime, especially drug and gun crime, in the roughest city neighborhoods. But we’ve traveled too far down that road already. More than 2.2 million Americans live in prisons and jails. A hugely disproportionate number of them come from places like Anacostia and the South Bronx, Dorchester and Chicago’s South Side. There is a kind of Laffer curve to criminal punishment — at some point, more bodies in the state penitentiary mean less deterrence. When a prison sentence is a rare event, it carries great stigma. Make it common, and it becomes a rite of passage, even a badge of honor. That does nothing to lessen the allure of crime and drugs for the young men who still live outside prison walls. In many high-crime city neighborhoods, we are either approaching that tipping point or already past it. Among people who study our criminal justice system, there is widespread agreement — across the ideological spectrum; even John DiIulio agrees — that the prison population needs to come down. We need less punishment, not more.(Link Added)

This is a very accurate statement* and one that needs to be remembered when dealing with crime in inner cities.

The culture in Compton, California, for example, was such that it was a badge of honor if you had been ‘locked up’. The average kid in Compton knows at least a couple people in each of the many prisons throughout California. When a lot of the people you know, some of them close friends, uncles, brothers, and sometimes even fathers, spend a considerable amount of their time in prison, you start to lose that sense of fear that the typical person has for prisons. Prisons start to become more of a place to see old friends than a place to be feared and avoided.

In addition, the culture in prison is very similar to the culture in inner cities. Toughness and respect are the highest values, and all other values are subordinated. The way people interact with one another and the pastimes are almost identical (card games, dominoes, with the possible exception of craps) with how one lives outside of prison. So one already has a feel for what’s ahead.

Then comes the cultural acceptance and, in many cases, glorification of ex-cons. Ex-cons, especially the ones that did time for more serious crimes, are looked up to, especially by the children. They get a lot of the power, the females, and especially the respect of others around them. When they walk around they feel they are feared in a culture that values toughness above all else.

Simply pressing for more punishment is not the only solution. At some point, there has to be something else done. When someone goes to prison he is almost forced by society to stay in the culture he lives in. Because it is only that culture that gives the ex-con the self-respect he feels he deserves. He is barred from almost any decent income no matter what he does afterwards. It is a vicious cycle that is difficult to break.

*For the record, I was never in prison. My testimony only comes from what I have been told by many of my friends that had been to prison and what I saw growing up.