22 Years on, NY Times Still Worried by Prisons Filling as Crime Falls

Clay Waters
April 28th, 2019 11:41 AM
The New York Times is still mocked in media bias circles for a notorious headline from 1997 lamenting tougher sentencing guidelines. The article's now-notorious headline: "Crime Rates are Falling, but Prisons Keep on Filling.” But the paper's hand-wringing liberal confusion over the apparent paradox has a straightforward explanation: Crime was down at least partially because more criminals were…
 

NYT Still Puzzled By 'Paradox' of Low Crime Rate, Overstuffed Prisons

Clay Waters
October 31st, 2014 12:23 AM
James Taranto's Opinion Journal page features a long-running gag, "Fox Butterfield, Is That You?" an homage to former New York Times crime reporter Fox Butterfield, who wrote an article under a now-notorious headline: "Crime Rates are Falling, but Prisons Keep on Filling." Yet the paper's liberal confusion had a straightforward explanation: Crime was down at least partially because more criminals…
 

NYT Finally Admits (Reluctantly) That Imprisonment Lowers Crime Rate

Clay Waters
October 31st, 2011 1:41 PM
A Sunday New York Times editorial on crime, “Falling Crime, Teeming Prisons,” indirectly acknowledged (at last) the paper’s blinkered liberal failure to connect the seemingly obvious idea that crime falls when more criminals are behind bars, as captured by a notorious headline on a September 28, 1997 "Week in Review" story by Fox Butterfield, "Crime Keeps on Falling, But Prisons Keep on Filling…