Crime and Prisons [h/t Taranto]

The Chicago Tribune has an editorial that demonstrates the absolute nuttiness of left-wing thinking, of that oxymoron is not obvious on the face of it. The Tribune notes:

No one theory explains why crime rates have declined in Illinois and around the country since the early 1990s. A decline in drug and alcohol abuse has been a welcome contributor. Community policing has been effective in many places. Crime tends to be an occupation of the young, but the population is aging. More people have been locked up and kept off the streets. The economy has been strong, unemployment low. All have been factors in a welcome reduction in crime.

But then the editorial loses its mind in the next sentence.

What's harder to explain is why, though crime has fallen so sharply, prison admissions have continued to rise.

Does the glaringly obvious fact that criminals may not choose to commit crime because the enforcement has stiffened not occur to the double-digit IQs on the Trib editorial board?

Giuliani started prosecuting ALL CRIMES and presto! the crime rate diminished and prisons were bulging with perps. Wannabe perps were actually discouraged by strict enforcement.

The rest of the Tribune editorial could be written by Oprah, it is so vacuous and vapid and devoid of any knowledge of the laws of cause and effect. Check the link above for yet another example of how, when something is working, busybodies on the left have to tinker with it until it is broken again. The specious spurious sophisticated double-talk of the Trib editorial writers should be inscribed above the prison door at Joliet!! Or as Taranto puts it:

OK, here's a wild, outside-the-box idea. Maybe the reason crime has fallen is that so many criminals are in prison, where it's harder for them to commit crimes. When you think about it, it almost makes sense!