Take the war on crime. But the crime rate didn't change. That's how one murder projected a hundred times on television can produce the incarceration of 10,000 people who would otherwise not be locked up or who would be locked up for a shorter period. That crackdown has tripled the incarceration rate. The people who are making out are those who are building the prisons, those who are selling to the prisons, and those who are working in the prisons.
Politicians love crime control because they can run on law and order.
Voters love it because they think their streets will be safe. TV likes it because they can program violence as news and get the same audience that they get for melodrama. One other group inside California loves it-the prison guards, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. Here's the scam. The prison guards in California are a major campaign contributor to create their own Employment Act.