Thread by @JohnFPfaff

This.

Prior to #COVID19, we released ~1,700 ppl from prisons every DAY, and ~275,000 (!!) ppl every DAY from county jails.

The paltry releases under COVID prison furloughs and jail reductions are mere drops in the rivers of people flowing in and out of penal instititions.

https://twitter.com/JoshuaBHoe/status/1250764419019276297

Given the 625,000 releases from prison and 10,000,000 releases from jails--and given the trauma ppl experience in prison and jails and our inadequate re-entry policies--it will ALWAYS be possible to find a striking salient case of reoffending to hype up.

This is, ofc, the bread and butter of tough-on-crime politicians, law enforcement officials, and the media who support them (hi, @nypost).

But important to note something about this effort to weaponize the "Willie Horton Effect": we have NO real evidence if it actually matters.

There's no doubt that politicians FEAR the "one bad case." That's empirically true.

But does that One Bad Case actually translate into actual electoral defeat? Far less clear.

In fact, the Horton ad itself may have had little impact on the 88 election: washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-ca…

But anyway, as we saw with someone hyping the one #COVID19 furlough resulting in a murder in Florida, efforts to weaponize One Bad Cases will surely persist.

Just never lose sight of how SMALL these releases are compared to the churn of humanity through our prisons/jails.