Forward, Into The Past! 2026-04-25

     (Thank you, Firesign Theater, for anticipating this need.)

     Quoth Matt Walsh:

Matt Walsh “Almost all of the arrests that happen in a given year are from like 5% of the population”

“Cause you take out the 70% who are never arrested, you take out the 25% who are arrested one time in their entire life, and you're left with 5% of the entire population that's… pic.twitter.com/NnTeztc84n

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) April 24, 2026

     Yes, those are valid statistics. They may mix misdemeanors with felonies, but I’m unable to resolve that at this time.

     Time was, there were “three strikes” provisions on the law books in several states. Those laws constrained the sentencing practices of judges: a criminal convicted of a third felony offense was automatically sentenced to life without parole. For a while, those states locked up felony recidivists permanently; the public was permanently protected from their proclivities.

     I’m not sure what happened to those three-strikes laws. This article sheds some light, but not enough to be sure that the three-strikes provision is still enforced. Among the facets of criminal law that would bear on this is the propensity of judges and prosecutors to alter an indictment on their own authority. A judge who dislikes the three-strikes provision might unilaterally dismiss a felony indictment to keep an accused criminal from suffering permanent incarceration.

     There is also the racial aspect to consider. If we go by national demographics, American prison populations already overrepresent blacks and Hispanics. The implications are not hard to grasp. Neither is the message a further concentration of imprisoned blacks and Hispanics would send to the White majority.

     The hawkers of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” are violently hostile to an accurate representation of blacks and Hispanics among felonious criminals. It’s the statistic they dislike most. So they screech about “social justice” and “the legacy of slavery,” as if those were valid justifications for allowing habitual felons to continue to prey on the rest of us.

     However, another statistic is on my mind this morning: the population of these United States. That’s estimated at 330 million persons. If we were to imprison 5% of that number, that’s 16.5 million permanently incarcerated persons. I don’t know if enough prisons could be built and staffed to accommodate that many permanent residents. A far smaller number of persons are imprisoned today – about 1.25 million – and cries of “prison overcrowding” already resound nationally.

     An old friend, a far harsher person than I, advocated not lifelong incarceration for the habitual felon but execution: “Three strikes and you’re dead.” Given the way the death penalty is treated today, that wouldn’t relieve the pressure on our prisons. But Tom is a forthright fellow; he envisioned the application of the penalty to occur immediately after the third conviction.

     That calls to mind a scene from Neal Stephenson’s early novel The Diamond Age:

     “Congratulations, Bud, you're a pa,” Judge Fang said. “I gather from your reaction that this comes as something of a surprise. It seems evident that your relationship with this Tequila is tenuous, and so I do not find that there are any mitigating circumstances I should take into account in sentencing. That being the case, I would like you to go out that door over there”—Judge Fang pointed to a door in the corner of the courtroom—“and all the way down the steps. Leave through the exit door and cross the street, and you will find a pier sticking out into the river. Walk to the end of that pier until you are standing on the red part and await further instructions.”
     […]
     The pier did not turn red until the very end, where it began to slope down steeply toward the river. It had been coated with some kind of grippy stuff so his feet wouldn't fly out from under him. He turned around and looked back up at the domed court building, searching for a window where he might make out the face of Judge Fang or one of his gofers. The family of Chinese was following him down the pier, carrying their long bundle, which was draped with garlands of flowers and, as Bud now realized, was probably the corpse of a family member. He had heard about these piers; they were called funeral piers.
     Several dozen of the microscopic explosives known as cookie-cutters detonated in his bloodstream.

     Efficient, yes, but I’m fairly sure our anti-death-penalty activists would disapprove, to say nothing of the social-justice crowd.

     Still, that 5% statistic has considerable power. If it were to get the right amount of airtime and column-inches, who could say what might follow? The conversion of Manhattan Island into a giant, open-air prison camp, perhaps?

     Just an early-morning thought.