Impeccable Timing

Yesterday, PaddyMac argued that preventative social work doesn't work to reduce crime, but that we need to have more prisons to lock up all of those bad characters, like the poor and the minorities. You know, the ones that would be more likely to want to improve their situation by having a party in control that is not interested in serving just the richest 10% of the country.

Paddy based his argument on someone else's findings that crime went down during poor economic times and went up in the good times. Or something like that.

Unfortunately, Paddy's own employer, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, tripped him up on the very same day he made this ludicrous argument. Predictably, it was found that domestic violence, including murders, has been jumping during these rough economic straits:

Domestic violence homicides in Wisconsin are on target to hit a 10-year high in 2009 with an average of more than one person dying every week, the Wisconsin Coalition Against Domestic Violence said Wednesday.

In 2008 there were 36 domestic violence homicides in the state, but preliminary figures show there were at least 46 domestic violence incidents in the state that resulted in 60 deaths in 2009, said Patti Seger, executive director of the state coalition. While national and local law enforcement reports show decreases in violent crime and homicides in 2009 - Milwaukee hit a 20-year low - domestic violence figures soared, she said.

"We have to see domestic violence as an epidemic," Seger said.

She and other advocates stressed that domestic violence differs from other violent crimes that law enforcement deals with, and that the economic stress that families have faced in the last year or so has played a role.

Why does the paper keep Paddy on the payroll when they let go of so many better and more erudite and intellectually honest people?