Over the past decade or so, America has experienced a radical experiment with criminal justice reform.
The number of people arrested each year has fallen sharply. Public prosecutors now prosecute significantly fewer cases. Those that have been convicted have generally been given shorter sentences. As a consequence, America’s prison population is now 25 percent lower than it was in 2011.
It isn’t only those on the far left, motivated by an anti-police and anti-prison agenda, who have pushed for these changes. Plenty of well-meaning conservatives signed up for criminal justice reform, too. Everyone needs a second chance, right?
In 2018, it was conservatives in Washington DC that passed the First Step Act, which explicitly sought to reduce the prison population. Here in Mississippi in 2014, we overhauled sentencing laws in the belief that there are better ways of preventing crime than filling up our jails.
Criminal justice reform might have cut the number of people arrested, prosecuted and jailed, but these measures have not cut crime. Quite the contrary, in fact. These well-meaning reforms are responsible for the sharp spike in crime that we have seen in many parts of America, such as Jackson, Mississippi – a city that now has one of the highest per capita murder rates in the country.
In 2013, the year before Mississippi overhauled sentencing laws, 28 people were murdered in Jackson per 100,000 people. By 2021, almost four times that many people, 101 per 100,000 people in our capital city were homicide victims.
When the Mississippi Center for Public Policy recently surveyed Jackson families about education opportunities, I was shocked to discover that their overwhelming concern was not school standards or even transport. It was safety. Decent families worrying about their kids getting shot are the price we pay for naïve criminal justice reforms.
Those that make public policy need to deal with the world as it is, not as they would wish it to be. To give us a reality check, we hosted a large public event with Rafael Mangual, a senior fellow of the Manhattan Institute, and our tough-on-crime state auditor, Shad White.
The author of the best-selling book, "Criminal (In)Justice," Rafael Mangual spelled out a few uncomfortable truths.
Firstly, the majority of crime in America – and Mississippi – tends to be concentrated in a small number of places. That said, it would be a mistake to think that if we were to exclude Hinds County from the stats, Mississippi would be safe. Even without the Jackson crime hotspot, crime throughout our state is far too high.
As Shad White added, we need statewide action and cannot dismiss crime as a distant problem.
A second truth that Mangual spelled out is that the victims of crime in America are disproportionately African American. Conversely, Mangual showed, when the police, prosecutors and the courts do decide to get tough on violent offenders, crime rates fall – and the beneficiaries are overwhelmingly African American.
A narrative has been advanced in recent years that America’s police and criminal justice system is systemically racist. Mangual showed that this narrative is simply wrong. Different outcomes in the criminal justice system do not reflect supposed biases of the criminal justice system but are reflective of offender behavior. Some have suggested that there is a link – or at least a correlation - with the breakdown in family structure, too.
As for the idea that we need to give people second chances, reflect on the fact that the average released state prisoner in the United States has approximately five prior convictions. Second chance? Sounds more like a fifth chance to me.
Who is not moved by the idea of redemption? The cold reality is that approximately 80 percent of released state prisoners will be rearrested at least once over a 10-year period after their release.
Yes, prison should aim to rehabilitate, but too often in the name of redemption, we are releasing criminals to reoffend. The primary purpose of prison must be to incarcerate bad people so that they cannot do bad things to good people.
Far too often when I read about a murder in our state, it emerges that the perpetrator has a previous history of run-ins with the law, and often convictions. There is nothing good or kind about misplaced criminal justice reform.
The U.S. dollar is the cornerstone of the global financial system but is facing a crisis of confidence from decades of reckless fiscal and monetary policies. If this continues, the dollar could soon lose its global reserve currency status. Global competitors such as China and Russia are taking advantage of these reckless policies, further threatening trust in the dollar.
Confidence in a currency is only as strong as that of the institutions issuing the currency. In the dollar’s case, those institutions are the federal government and the Federal Reserve. Both have been irresponsible in their respective fiscal or monetary policies, and the ramifications of their mischief for the dollar would be a weaker economy and higher inflation domestically and a reshuffling of economic power globally.
Since early 2020, Congress has added more than $7 trillion to the national debt from massive deficit spending. Congress financed this by issuing U.S. Treasury securities, crowding out investments like private sector equities and bonds. Additionally, net interest payment on U.S. debt is about 8% of the federal budget and increasing rapidly. Interest expenses are expected to exceed spending on national defense or safety nets soon if Congress fails to rein in excess spending.
While the House Republicans’ bill to raise the debt ceiling and cut spending is promising, it’s unlikely to go anywhere with Democrats in charge of the Senate and the White House.
Since the early 2000s, the Federal Reserve has held its target federal funds rate too low for too long. And in 2008, it started purchasing longer-term Treasury securities and other assets, known as quantitative easing.
The Fed operates under a dual mandate of encouraging stable prices and pursuing full employment. It violated the former part of the mandate through asset purchases that fueled inflation. It now violates the latter part of the mandate as it crushes employment with quantitative tightening and the resulting higher interest rates, hence what’s known as the “boom-and-bust cycle.”
These violations, combined with its early incoherent messaging on inflation, erode confidence in the Fed’s monetary policy prowess. And this is far from a domestic concern, as global trade partners see the writing on the wall and are acting accordingly. And if confidence in the dollar continues to wane, so will the Fed’s ability to conduct monetary policy effectively by not being able to substantially influence market interest rates.
Recently, the Saudi Arabian government approved partial membership with China’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization. This is part of China’s strategy to expand its influence beyond the West. China conducted its “first major lNG sale in renminbi instead of dollars” and made Brazil its main trading partner instead of the U.S.
Other countries are also beginning to move away from the dollar for international transactions.
Countries across the globe know the U.S. is in economic trouble and are changing the way they do business. We should react accordingly, beginning with ending these government policy failures weakening the U.S. economy and the dollar.
First, we should address excessive fiscal and monetary policy discretion by Congress and the Federal Reserve, respectively.
This can be achieved by rules-based policies, such as a strict government spending limit for Congress and the Taylor rule for the Fed. Doing so would reduce the costly mountain of debt created by Congress and the monetary mischief by the Fed, helping to provide confidence in the economy and dollar.
Second, the U.S. should eventually move off the fiat currency system eventually.
The dollar should be backed by real assets like gold and silver. Reimplementing the gold standard or something with underlying value from productive use of capital and labor, making it more attractive to domestic and international investors.
Finally, the U.S. must take international trade seriously.
It should adopt a foreign policy of peace and goodwill through free-trade agreements with countries that benefit all parties. Tariffs and other protectionist measures do not provide that path. They lead to trade wars and tension between countries and hurt people’s livelihoods across the globe. Encouragement of global trade would support a stronger dollar.
Failing to take these steps will continue the slide of confidence and value of the dollar globally. It also jeopardizes the economic future of our country. This will result in more U.S. global partners exiting agreements and reducing investment in America. The consequences will be a weak economy and dollar that will hurt Americans.
Charles Beauchamp, Ph.D., CTP®, is an associate professor of finance at Mississippi College and a contributing fellow at the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.
This article originally appeared on the Daily Caller.
(Jackson, MS): Best-selling author Rafael Mangual was in Jackson this week advocating for more policing and stricter incarceration policies.
Over the last two decades, Mangual said there has been a shift in criminal justice reform. At a luncheon hosted last week by the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, he said the leniency and skepticism surrounding criminal justice is evidenced by a 25% decrease in the prison population, a 15% decrease in the jail population and a 25% decline in arrests.
While activists continue to advocate for decarceration and depolicing, Mangual's research shows that this policy agenda is dangerous.
The majority of crime in America is concentrated in just a handful of places, geographically and demographically. Fifty percent of the murders that occur in the country happen in only 2% of US counties - half of US counties will not see a single homicide in a given year. Demographically, Black men are 10% more likely to be the victim of homicide in America compared to their white counterparts. For example, since 2008, 95% of shooting victims in New York City were Black or Hispanic males.
This data shows, Mangual said, that the most vulnerable people, the ones who are more likely to be involved in violent crimes, are minorities living in impoverished areas.
The argument on the other side is that the United States has an incarceration problem - the United States makes up 5% of the world's population, but 20% of the world's prison population - but in order to decarcerate, the US must do it safely, something Mangual said cannot be done for a majority of criminals currently in our prison system.
Two-thirds of the country's prison population consists of offenders convicted of violent felonies or crimes involving weapons. More than 80% of offenders released from prison will commit more crimes once released and re-arrested for violent felonies. Mangual said this goes against the left's agenda which promotes the idea that the US doesn’t give second chances.
"What that tells us is that the most serious crime problem that we have is one that is driven by people who have been given multiple bites of the apple despite showing their repeated criminal conduct, but they have no intention of playing by society’s rules," Mangual said. "And yet the agenda that we have seen characterizing criminal justice policy increasingly over the last several decades has been the idea that we ought to decarcerate en masse."
Mangual was joined at the event by Mississippi State Auditor Shad White. White has been a strong advocate for eliminating crime in Mississippi and said that we can take the ideas Mangual has given us and apply them here in the Magnolia State.
For the last two years, Jackson has ranked as the highest city per capita for homicide in the country. If Jackson were taken out of the equation, Mississippi would still rank in the top five most dangerous states per capita in the US, which shows that crime is not just a Jackson problem - it's a Mississippi problem, White said.
In order to combat crime in Mississippi, he said we have to be pro-law enforcement and get tough on violent criminals.
"I’m grateful for a nationally recognized expert to come here and tell us about the real data underlying real solutions that we can get at this problem," White said. "We have a responsibility to the most vulnerable in our society to enact real solutions to get at this problem."
If liberty keeps on winning across the South, America’s center of economic gravity is likely to shift.
Throughout the 20th century, economic activity in America was clustered around the traditional business hubs in the Northeast, the Midwest, and California. Southern states were a bit of a backwater.
Then a generation or so ago, things started to change. In the 1970s, Atlanta, Orlando, and Dallas expanded rapidly. In the 1980s, per capita incomes in a number of southern states started to catch up with other parts of the country. But overall, the South still lagged behind. Even as some of the more peripheral parts of the South began to thrive, the deeper south you went, as a general rule, the less growth and prosperity you were likely to find.
Not for much longer. The southern United States is now not only the most populous part of America. There is mounting evidence that the southern states are going to become America’s economic powerhouse.
According to a new report out this week by ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, economic prospects are brighter in the South than in any other region of the country. With the exception of Louisiana, every southern state in the U.S. is now ranked in the top half of the country in terms of economic outlook. Even my own state, Mississippi, rose five places this year and is now ranked as having the 22nd-most-promising economic outlook in America.
It is the traditional business centers of California (45th), Illinois (46th), and New York (50th) that are the laggards in terms of economic outlook.
To be sure, ALEC’s ranking lists states on the basis of future economic prospects. It is not a measure of how things are, but rather of how the authors think things might be. Even so, it is remarkable that anyone should now rate the economic prospects of Mississippi or Alabama as brighter than California’s.
What explains America’s emerging southern success story? It has a great deal to do with low taxes, limited government, and liberty. California might have once been an easygoing state, with light regulation and an attractive environment for entrepreneurs. Today, it has an almost European zeal to make rules for everything. New York and Chicago are so hostile to businesses, they’ve suffered an exodus of talent and capital over the past decade.
Southern states, meanwhile, have become more business-friendly — and it is not just the giants, such as Texas and Florida, that have introduced free-market reforms. ALEC’s report shows that even states such as my own Mississippi have made themselves more business-friendly than some of the traditional big-business states.
In 2022, Mississippi’s Tax Freedom Act significantly cut the state income tax. That not only gave a massive tax break to hundreds of thousands of Mississippians. The reform also meant that we moved to a flat 5 percent state personal income tax right away, with the rate falling further to a flat 4 percent by 2026. This, perhaps as much as anything, helps explain why our state rose five places in ALEC’s rankings.
Second, Mississippi adopted a universal occupational-licensing law. This sounds very technocratic, but the law’s effect is straightforward: It removes a lot of red tape in the labor market, making it easier for outsiders to move to Mississippi and get certified here if they have been approved elsewhere.
Even more important in the longer term, enabling outsiders to get more easily certified creates pressure within Mississippi to eliminate unnecessarily onerous regulation that prevents Mississippians from being certified. Already, policy-makers are looking at how to eliminate a number of boards that frankly do little beyond restrict the number of people who can earn a living in a particular area of employment. It is probably too early for the impact of this to show up in any data, but the cumulative effect over time could be profound.
Third, Mississippi has gradually reduced the percentage of the workforce on the public payroll. Historically our state has tended to have a lot of people working for government. There are still, according to ALEC’s report, 606 public employees per 10,000 people in our state, but the numbers are now coming down. Shifting more people from employment in big government bureaucracies to the private sector is likely to increase future productivity.
ALEC’s report suggests that as free-market reforms have spread from one southern state to the next, with some southern states emulating their neighbors, growth and prosperity have started to spread.
If liberty keeps on winning across the South, America’s center of economic gravity is likely to shift.
Best-selling author and Fox News commentator Alex Epstein was in Jackson this week advocating for fossil fuels and warning of the harmful effects of the Net Zero movement.
At a lunch event hosted by the Mississippi Center for Public Policy in Jackson, Epstein shared his thoughts on the benefits of fossil fuels and the climate.
A philosopher by trade, Epstein has spent an extreme amount of time researching the facts and figures of our world's energy sources. He saw the move toward a Net Zero environment from government organizations, corporations and financial institutions wanting to completely eradicate fossil fuels, but after years of study found that over the next few decades, in order for our society to thrive, we should be growing, not eliminating, fossil fuels. A better world is one that uses more fossil fuels, he said.
His book, "Fossil Future," states that when arguing in favor of fossil fuels, one should look at the benefits and side effects — both of which prove that fossil fuels are affordable, reliable, versatile and scaleable for a multitude of people to take advantage of.
Fossil fuels power 80% of the world's energy today. Without them, the planet would not be able to properly operate. There is no evidence, he argues, that replacing fossil fuels with solar or wind energy would create a Net Zero environment or would be the most cost-effective solution.
"When it comes to fossil fuels, there is an enormous tendency to ignore or deny the enormous benefits, including climate benefits, and then to exaggerate or ‘catastrophize’ the side effects," Epstein said. "...I think the fate of the world depends on using and expanding fossil fuels."
In order to continue in a free market society, we need the freedom to capitalize on the fossil fuel industry and not be forced to use inferior energy schemes.
Mississippi is on the up! Mississippi’s economic prospects have improved significantly and in terms of economic outlook our state now ranks 22nd out of all 50 US states.
According to research by ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, Mississippi’s economic prospects are now brighter than those of either Alabama or Louisiana. We are only just behind South Carolina.
ALEC’s report shows that the kind of free market reforms the Mississippi Center for Public Policy has helped champion in recent years work. They have helped lift Mississippi up five places in the rankings over the past year, and have directly improved Mississippi’s economic prospects.
This follows three significant free market reforms we have seen in our state in the past few years.
First and most obviously, we cut the state income tax. The Mississippi Tax Freedom Act 2022 was not only a massive tax break for hundreds of thousands of Mississippians. It means that we are moving to a flat 4 percent rate. The report clearly shows that this move has significantly improved the outlook for our state.
Second, Mississippi adopted a universal occupational licensing law. This sounds very technocratic, but the effect of this is straightforward. It removes a lot of red tape in the labor market, making it easier for outsiders to move to our state and get certified here if they have been approved elsewhere.
Even more important in the longer term, enabling outsiders to get more easily certified creates pressure within Mississippi to eliminate unnecessarily onerous regulation that prevents Mississippians from being certified. Already there has been discussion about eliminating a number of boards that frankly do little beyond restricting the number of people who can earn a living in a particular area of employment.
It is probably too early for the effect of this to show up in any data, but the cumulative effect over time could be profound.
Third, Mississippi has gradually reduced the percentage of the workforce on the public payroll. Historically our state has tended to have a lot of people working for the government. There are still, according to ALEC’s report, 606 public employees per 10,000 people in our state, but the numbers are starting to come down.
Why is this important for growth? If too many people work for the government, it takes talent away from the private sector, making it harder for businesses to find the right people. Working in the private sector often means that people are more productive and innovative than they would be working in a big government bureaucracy.
Mississippi, the report suggests, is part of a Southern success story. All the southern US states, with the exception of Louisiana, are in the top half of the country in terms of economic outlook.
At the bottom of the league table in terms of economic outlook at California (45th), Illinois (46th) and New York (50th).
This is clear evidence that economic momentum in America is shifting from the historic hubs in the Northeast, mid-west and west coast to the South.
The southern US is a success story – and thanks to free-market reforms, Mississippi is becoming part of this southern success story.
Douglas Carswell is the President & CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.
Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister is the UK’s Barry Goldwater. A failure at the time, but shown to be accurate in the long term
Liz Truss was in Washington last week. Speaking at the Heritage Foundation, she was unapologetic about her short-lived premiership. Indeed, she doubled down on her warnings that the US and the UK risk “becoming social democracies by the back door”.
Free-market capitalism in the West, Truss told her audience, “has gone off course”, with an anti-growth mindset pervading policymaking circles on both sides of the Atlantic.
While Truss was in America, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced the appointment of Megan Greene to the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee. His decision to elevate yet another establishment economist marinaded in Treasury groupthink underscores how spectacularly unsuccessful Truss’s short-lived efforts to overturn economic orthodoxy in Britain proved to be. The orthodox thinking that got Britain into its current economic mess remains entrenched.
Truss was right to recognise that Britain is in a mess. Growth over the past two decades has been dire, so bad, in fact, that it is difficult to think of Britain as a high-income country any more. Even Mississippi, the poorest state in America, is projected to overtake the UK in per capita income terms. Rather than try to address Britain’s low growth, the country’s economic establishment seems resigned to it.
When George Osborne created the Office for Budget Responsibility, his intention was to ensure that government economic forecasts were honest. What he actually did was to hand control over fiscal forecasting to the OBR, meaning that today it is the OBR, not the Treasury, that drives fiscal policy. This helps to explain why, after 13 years of Tory government, taxes and spending are so high.
Back in the 1960s and 1970s, Britain’s economic establishment believed that fiscal stimulus was the way to engineer economic growth. That was seen to fail, but today officials believe in using monetary stimulus. According to the experts, interest rates need to be lowered to stimulate growth when things are looking down, but raised when the economy perks up. Yet it has proved to be easier to cut interest rates than to raise them. Easy money has allowed overconsumption and ghost growth. Bad investments have been made by those desperate for higher returns. Over time, growth and productivity have stalled.
Ironically, it was as Truss was attempting to move Britain away from this model that some seriously bad investments made by UK insurance firms – so-called “liability-driven investments” – threatened to trigger a full-scale financial crisis.
Truss’s big mistake was not her analysis of the problem, nor even her relatively modest tax-cutting proposals. It was her commitment to a universal energy-relief scheme, which it was feared at the time might mean an additional £130 billion in spending.
Watching Truss in Washington, I thought of that great American conservative Barry Goldwater. Like Truss, he came to prominence promoting a radical new economic agenda. He, too, was to prove spectacularly unsuccessful. Goldwater’s 1964 campaign for the White House saw him lose by what was then the largest margin in history.
For several years afterwards, Goldwater – like Truss today – seemed a byword for failure.
But like Goldwater, Truss’s analysis of what has gone wrong is accurate. Her solutions, like his, are sound. In time, she too will come to be seen as an essential precursor for the change her country needs. As for those creatures of the establishment who are today back in control, they will one day be utterly forgotten – perhaps sooner than they might imagine
Douglas Carswell is president and CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy. He was previously MP for Clacton.
This article was originally featured in The Telegraph on April 15.
Mississippi currently has a record budget surplus. As the Magnolia Tribune recently reported, total March 2023 state revenue collections were 16.84% over the sine-die revenue estimate for the fiscal year. Total year-to-date collections came in at $601,866,349 or 12.86% over estimates.
When revenues are far higher than expected there is always a danger that politicians will find new ways to spend it. To try to prevent that from happening, the Mississippi Center for Public Policy published a Responsible 2024 Budget for our state at the start of this year’s legislative session.
Overall, we are pleased to see that although spending increased it did so broadly at the rate we proposed.
The Mississippi Legislature officially set the Fiscal Year 2024 state general fund at $6.63 million. While this is the largest operating budget in state history, it was not as large an increase as we had feared.
In our Responsible Budget for Mississippi, we called for the state’s general fund to have an appropriations limit of $6.75 billion. It seems that lawmakers heeded our advice, spending well below the cap.
The FY2023 estimated state revenue collection is set at $6.987 billion. That leaves our state with at least a $600 million surplus just for this fiscal year alone since the budget for 2023 is only $6.3 billion. Mississippi already has a $3.9 billion surplus in the bank, and with the additional $6.3 million from this year, will have well over $4 billion.
Our report projects revenue collections for FY2024 to be $7.5 billion, according to Mississippi’s Joint Legislative Budget Committee, allowing for an even bigger surplus than the one we already possess. If the legislature continues to follow our responsible budget and caps spending each year at $6.75 billion, the state will see a $0.8 billion surplus each year.
What do we do with the surplus?
A large portion of the approximate $0.8 billion in yearly surplus could be used to further cut the state personal income tax. The data shows we can afford to do so.
The result would be more companies organizing in Mississippi, increased individual liberty and a booming economy.
While it is good news that we have both a budget surplus and room for future tax cuts, we should not lose sight of the fact that overall our state is heavily subsidized by federal spending. Ultimately, for our state to prosper we not only use our surplus to reduce taxes. We need state leadership willing to reduce our dependence on federal handouts as well.
A recent arrival in America, I often get asked what I like most about living in the United States. Here are my outsider’s impressions about the US and some of the many reasons I love living here.
The first reason I love living in America is Mississippi. I might be British by birth, but I’m Mississippi by choice – and I cannot think of any place I would rather live than right here in the Magnolia state.
The climate is delightful – even in July and August. There’s more sunshine most mornings in Mississippi than you’d expect to see in a month in London.
It’s not just the climate that is warm and sunny, but the people. It is often impossible to go and buy gas or groceries without falling into cheerful conversation with a total stranger. Never feel defensive about being from Mississippi. To me, it is an honor to call this place home.
Second, I love America’s energy & enthusiasm. It is easy to overlook things that seem familiar to us. We all take for granted what we know. But take it from me when I tell you that Americans are full of infectious enthusiasm.
Almost everyone you meet is upbeat about something. Folk harbor real pride in their community, university, high school, military, work, state and, yes, country.
There’s far less of that cynicism-masquerading-as-sophistication in America compared with what you find elsewhere (Yes, and that’s even after you take into account one or two Mississippi newspaper columnists, too!).
I suspect that this enthusiasm is one of the secrets of America’s success. It helps explain why people in the United States are so entrepreneurial. Enthusiasm confers on Americans, especially younger Americans, a can-do attitude that drives them to do things and to innovate.
Third, I love American civic-mindedness. When tornados devastated several towns in the Delta the other week, I was struck by how ordinary Mississippians responded. They didn’t talk about what the government should do to help but did it themselves.
Churches rallied round. Rotary clubs and others sent supplies to those impacted. One gentleman I was talking to down in Pascagoula this week went to one of the areas affected and took it upon himself to rebuild the home of someone that he met there.
When Fox News’ Douglas Murray came to speak in Jackson a while ago, he explained why he was optimistic about America’s future. Americans, he said, don’t sit around waiting for the cavalry to arrive. They realize that they are the cavalry – and act. I can see what he means.
Fourth is football (although some of y’all perhaps think that should be first). I was raised playing rugby and cricket, and I never saw a football game until two years ago. Now there’s nowhere I’d rather be on a Friday night than watching the local high school game.
Football is not just a game – it’s the entire school or university putting on a spectacular performance full of infectious pride. Come to think of it, football is a perfect fusion of American enthusiasm and civic-mindedness, which is maybe why I like it so much ….
“Is there anything you miss about England?” I am occasionally asked.
America is awesome and there’s not much I would want to change about this amazing country. But if there were two things I would do differently, it would be hot tea and roundabouts.
No matter how much I love sweet tea, I sometimes struggle to find hot tea served the way it is supposed to be. As for roundabouts, they seem to me to be the perfect libertarian way of managing the traffic. No need for any government-run traffic lights, but an entirely self-regulating flow of traffic instead. I’m more than happy to live with those two minor imperfections.
Douglas Carswell is the President and CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.