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 the Stanley Cup in both 1974 and 1975. Although their teams featured many excellent players, they were also successful because they took full physical advantage of their opponents—in short, they were goons who clubbed the other teams into submission. This worked to their advantage because the referees, in an effort to seem fair, always tried to “even out” the penalties for each team, so many egregious infractions committed by the Flyers simply went uncalled, which was perhaps my earliest experience with “Woke” justice that punishes the innocent by setting the guilty free.

Insisting that rates of conviction and incarceration match the demographic composition of America is just as ridiculous as those NHL referees refusing to whistle penalties in a misguided effort to be “fair” to the jerks on the Flyers pummeling the other team. If we can forget about our cultural obsession with race and ethnicity for the moment, it is impossible to ignore the plain fact that men commit violent crimes—robbery, assault, and murder—at rates that far exceed women, and this is true across the world. Moreover, the victims of most of these violent crimes are female. Should police and prosecutors, so as to not seem unfair or discriminatory, stop arresting so many men—and perhaps find ways to arrest more traumatized women—so the numbers even out?

Those who spend their lives looking at spreadsheets instead of walking the streets of communities afflicted with crime forget that “color-blind” criminal justice is simply not possible. Moreover, Black Americans are just as happy as anyone else to see Black criminals arrested because they and their families will be safer as a result. Although it is important and necessary to examine the root causes—generational poverty, absent or neglectful parents, and lousy public education among others—that might cause Black Americans to offend at rates higher than other groups of Americans, explanations are not excuses, so justice should not be skewed and the suffering of the victims of crime forgotten.

Setting aside demographic differences in crime rates for a moment, there is another issue around criminals and criminal behavior that makes incarceration a necessary component of a safe society: a scary minority of our nation is just plain crazy.

Roughly 3% of our population can be classified as sociopaths, whose symptoms include erratic emotions, difficulty forming relationships, and impulsivity that can easily turn into criminality. Psychopaths, who are estimated to include 1% of Americans, are even more frightening: charming, heartless, and calculating. Neither of these two mental health problems can be cured, and the likelihood that they will reoffend is high. To refuse to remove them from the general population, which is exactly what the Democratic Socialists intend should they gain the power to close jails and prisons, would create a situation where the same individuals can torment and harm the innocent for their entire lifetimes with virtual impunity because a stint in a cell is the only way to stop them from terrorizing the weak and the guileless.

However, even those who are not demonstrably mentally ill will continue to commit crimes, unless they are promptly and severely punished. Why, for example, would a man who in the habit of beating his wife or threatening his neighbors stop doing so if the only punishment available was a finger-wagging lecture from a powerless judge?

Even if one is not a psychopath or sociopath, a fair number of those around us are happy to get away with whatever they can. Punishment (or simply the fear of its possibility) is necessary to restrain the behavior of the morally lax, who find it easy to justify shoplifting, vandalism, and abusive behavior—not to mention being just plain obnoxious and uncaring. Most of us are not in a position to hire a lawyer and file a civil suit if someone swipes our barbecue grill, and we depend on police, prosecutors, and jails to protect us from bullies and blowhards who would otherwise make our lives intolerable.

It does not help that the commonplace and reasonable morality that used to glue us together has been discarded in favor of laissez-faire attitudes that frown upon any thought that might be construed as judgment. Given that we today elevate the notion of unending tolerance, which is an abdication of responsibility and not at all an actual value, it should be no surprise that so many now believe laws are oppression—rather than recognizing they are the foundation of a functioning society.

Anarchy is a fashionable idea among the oblivious intellectuals of our nation, many of whom are probably still nursing a grudge about some perceived injustice from their childhoods, but laws that are rigorously enforced make everyone safer. Locking up drug dealers, embezzlers, blackmailers, muggers, arsonists, rapists, murderers and others is good, proper—and entirely necessary. That free-range felons are considered acceptable by a not inconsiderable segment of Americans who also want to abolish the U.S. Senate, the Electoral College, and ditch any facet of our Republic that impedes their governing priorities is not much of a surprise, but it is a disappointment so many are so deluded.