It is perhaps a bit surprising to realize, but just a scant decade ago there was no mass political moment (here’s looking at you, Democratic Socialists of America) vociferously arguing for abolishing the use of jails and prisons, which is typically expressed as “ending the carceral state” in America. Having conflated incarceration, which admittedly does touch the lives of many people of color, with the institutional racism they see everywhere, the political Left in our nation has abandoned cause and effect for a more sinister explanation—and deadly solution. If I may, a bit of a sports analogy might be useful here. Back in the early-1970’s I had a brief interest in professional ice hockey, mostly because NBC had a contract to broadcast the games on television, and the Philadelphia Flyers were one of the dominant teams at that point, winning Read more