This is a recurring story. Crime goes up and down with the economy. Bad economy? More crime. Great economy? Less crime. And yet everytime we're 5 years or so in

This is a recurring story. Crime goes up and down with the economy. Bad economy? More crime. Great economy? Less crime. And yet everytime we're 5 years or so in a boom "prevention" becomes "important", and of course the lesser offences (like small drug offences) become important. Exactly when crime is close to the lowest level it'll be that decade. This is very hard to explain, except of course when seen in the lens of "we must provide jobs for government workers". The same is true for things like juvenile justice. More kids than ever locked up. And yet ... less abuse than ever, less youth crime than ever before. What these systems are for, I don't know. But their numbers make it pretty clear what they're not for. They're not for protecting anyone in society.