The Left's Sacrifice of Prisoners

It has often been said that intellectuals on the left are “soft on criminals” but, even here, the question is whether those people accused of crime or convicted and in prison are the real objects of intellectuals’ concern or are incidental props in a larger picture - and expendable like others who are used as props.  For example, one of the horrific experiences of many men in prison is being gang-raped by other male prisoners.  Yet any attempt to reduce the incidence of such lasting traumatic experiences by building more prisons, so that each prisoner could be housed alone in a single cell, is bitterly opposed by the same people who are vehement in defense of prisoners’ “rights.”  Those rights matter as a means of condemning “society” but so does the opposition to the building of more prisons.  When the actual well-being of prisoners conflicts with the symbolic issue of preventing more prisons from being built, prisoners become just another sacrifice on the altar of a vision.

Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, p.183