For years we’ve heard about mass incarceration. Supposedly we send too many people to jail and prison. But how many is too many? If the innocent are convicted, clearly this is a serious problem that calls into question our justice system. We all agree on that. But it’s not the problem here.

We are talking about people who actually committed crimes, but activists claim they should not be crimes at all, or at most the punishment should be a slap on the wrist. Say this is true. If the approach is logical, it should apply elsewhere.

During the height of the pandemic, hospitals and especially ICUs were full to overflowing. Naturally, our efforts were focused on slowing the spread of Covid and mitigating its effects. We correctly saw the problem as too many sick people. But what if the same mode of thinking – or not thinking – were applied here as it is to mass incarceration?

We would walk through hospital wards and select the least ill patients. We could declare that anyone with a fever of less than 104 degrees, and anyone able to breathe without mechanical ventilation, was not really sick. We would take all these patients, give them back their clothes, and put them out on the street to fend for themselves and spread Covid to healthy people. We would blame doctors for hospitalizing too many people. We would reduce the numbers of doctors and close hospital wings, or even close hospitals.

Is this not precisely what the mass incarceration activists are advising us to do?

Don’t increase police patrols to deter crime. Instead defund the police and cut patrols.

Don’t arm citizens and encourage them to intervene to stop crime and aid victims. Instead disarm law-abiding citizens and threaten them with arrest or lawsuits if they so much as lay a hand on criminals.

Go through prisons and jails and select all but the most violent offenders. Give them back their clothes and put them out on the street to prey on more law-abiding citizens.

Reduce the numbers and morale of police officers, and close prison wings or even close prisons.

Don’t spend one dollar or one minute of thought on the root causes of crime. Don’t even mention that 70% of minority boys grow up without fathers. Don’t consider lack of respect for parent(s), teachers, principals, clergy (if any), authority, the Bible, or God Himself. Don’t bother yourself about rotten schools that leave graduates unable to do simple math or write a coherent sentence, and thus unable to get a decent job. Don’t contemplate the proverb: “He who does not teach his son a trade teaches him to be a thief.”

No, just babble on and on about mass incarceration, as if that and not a high crime rate were the real problem.

If mass incarceration is a problem, so is mass hospitalization. If we can’t be logical, at least we can be consistent.