14 ms·

U.S. Incarceration and Crime Rates Continue to Fall in Tandem

149 points by ascertain 10y ago

eth0up 10y ago
This is dandy and such, but it has a long, long way to go yet, still boasting the highest incarceration rates in the world: 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_ra... 2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/07/07/yes-u-s-locks-people-up-at-a-higher-rate-than-any-other-country/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/07/...
- rhizome 10y ago
  That's true, but the story is not that incarceration still exists, but to dispense with the argument that increased incarceration is necessary to reduce the crime rate.
  - StavrosK 10y ago
    Or, rather, that reducing the sentence duration will not increase crime.
    - rhizome 10y ago
      I put sentence length and number of sentences in the general bucket of "incarceration volume."
      - StavrosK 10y ago
        I know, I'm just pointing out that the article said the opposite, ie not that longer sentences will lead to less crime, but that shorter sentences don't lead to more crime. Just picking nits.
        rhizome 10y ago
        I think this is what the positive case of Poe's Law looks like.
  - tertius 10y ago
    I would argue that there's a break even if you put those two variables in a bubble. I don't know who wouldn't.
- jessaustin 10y ago
  Perhaps a measure way out on the tail of a distribution can revert most of the way toward the mean without significantly affecting other, nonlinearly correlated measures? In that case, even the grimmest nightmares of racists and prison guard unions could still come to pass, just not yet...
- rayiner 10y ago
  The difference is a little less shocking when you adjust for crime rates. E.g. we have about 8-10x higher incarceration rate of Germany, but we also have more than 4x the murders per capita. (And the chicken came before the egg here. Violent crime started going up in the 1960s, but it wasn't until the late 1990s that the incarceration rate had gone up by the same proportion as the violent crime rate.) Americans aren't very generous when it comes to crime. In many European countries, even murder carries only about a 10-15 year sentence. On the other hand, I wonder if that's a product of our situation. The United States is fantastically violent in comparison to Europe, and always has been: http://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/homicide-rates-in-the-united-states-and-england-1900-2000-pinker-2011-jpg.jpg http://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/homicid.... E.g. Berlin is slightly bigger than Chicago. In a typical year, it might have 60-70 murders. Chicago in comparison had well over 700 this year. You can't look at the criminal justice system in the U.S. relative to our more enlightened European counterparts without keeping in mind that difference.
  - filoeleven 10y ago
    > (And the chicken came before the egg here. Violent crime started going up in the 1960s, but it wasn't until the late 1990s that the incarceration rate had gone up by the same proportion as the violent crime rate.) Did the incarceration rate for violent crime go up, or was it the total incarceration rate due to e.g. increased prosecution of drug arrests? If it's the former, then it's great that more violent criminals are being caught and sentenced, but if it's the latter then it's just compounding the problem.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - rayiner 10y ago
      Even if we released all drug prisoners, the incarceration rate would only be about 15% lower: http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/releasing-drug-offenders-wont-end-mass-incarceration http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/releasing-drug-offenders-.... Meanwhile, it's about 6-7 times higher than what it was in the 1960s. Thus, almost all of that growth was not from drug offenses. It's not necessarily "great" that more violent criminals are being caught and sentenced. Many European countries manage just fine having e.g. 10-15 years maximum even for murder. Which is why I find the drug thing to be so frustrating. Drugs are not the major issue in the prison system. The real issue is whether just locking people up as a response to high crime rates actually works or not.
yusee 10y ago
Thanks, Obama!
MichaelBurge 10y ago
> Drug offenders accounted for half of federal prisoners and 16 percent of state prisoners in 2015. The decrease in the federal prison population was largely due to shorter drug sentences authorized by Congress and the U.S. Sentencing Commission. And this(https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/jmd/legacy/2013/09/07/prisons-detention.pdf https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/jmd/legacy/2013/...): > The FY 2015 Budget requests a total of $8.5 billion for federal prisons and detention And from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget > During fiscal year 2015, the Federal government received approximately $3.25 trillion in tax and fee revenue and had outlays (spending) of $3.7 trillion; The population of the US is 318.9 million, and (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...): > In total, 6,899,000 adults were under correctional supervision (probation, parole, jail, or prison) in 2013 – about 2.8% of adults (1 in 35) in the U.S. resident population. So our federal government would be 0.1% smaller in terms of expenses if it weren't responsible for drug offenses, but a full 1.4% of the population is under their control as a result. 2% of the population has lost its right to vote, so perhaps 1% due to drug offenses. That's about half the number of Jews in the US, which both political parties pander to quite heavily(making Israel a huge point of contention in any election). I guess that makes sense: drug reform is less visible than Israel in the news but still significant, though I haven't measured it to say that it's half. You're actually allowed to discriminate against people and take away their right to vote, but the states are punished by reducing their representational basis so they get fewer legislators and electors in elections. Since we have a winner-takes-all system, this encourages states to allow all minority groups to vote if they wouldn't tip the election. I was originally thinking it'd be strange for states to reduce their basis by as much as 1%, but it looks like there's an exemption for crimes: > Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State. I suppose, strictly speaking, you could have your right to vote stripped away if you get a parking ticket? I wonder if it's a gerrymandering scheme to throw Democrats in prison and take away their right to vote. (Democrats tend to be big on drugs) Since drug use counts towards the arrests but probably doesn't count towards the crime rate(it's a victimless crime, and the offender doesn't report it), that portion of it shouldn't affect the link described in the article. I'm not sure it's smart to directly compare percentages like the article does. If the crime rate is already low because all the criminals are locked up, then you'll have no change in crime rate and a low change in imprisonment. And you usually want to compare derivatives of the log-percentage, not the percentage directly.
taxicabjesus 10y ago
Punishment is almost always gratuitous. Aside from the handful of people whom society needs to be protected from, prison is always counter-productive. One of the recent stories linked here talks about how the brain doesn't really finish developing until the mid-20's, and that 20-something "kids" frequently get locked up for impulsiveness... I had a passenger who got fined $1000 for letting his medical marijuana card expire. In the future, this fellow has it on his record that he is a political criminal who didn't hurt anyone, and a zealous brain-dead prosecutor might use this prior conviction to advocate for prison. Another passenger had recently been released from a 2-year prison sentence. Her crime was sharing a single opiate pill with a friend. The cop was chuckling as he wrote her up. This one had gotten fat on prison food, which is not very nutritious. Several of her fellow inmates died from the neglect. (I guess police officers have to be rather disconnected from the consequences of their job. "I don't make the rules, I just enforce them" is a cop-out.) Nassim Nicholas Taleb (author of The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, etc) recently had this to say: Being nice counts the most when you are nice to people ignored by others, deprived of attention, or devoid of friends. The rest is largely theater. I tried to be nice to all my passengers, especially those who were having a rough day. One day I got a person going to the drive-through liquor store. I spent a few extra minutes talking to this person. After her taxi ride, I called back a time or two. There was a bit of hope in her voice - 'someone cares'. But on the third day she didn't answer, and I got distracted. Apparently she sobered up, but I didn't know that until later. After about two months this one started drinking again, found my card, and she called me because she just wanted someone nice to talk to. This one had tried (really hard) to stay sober after almost 2-years in prison for her 3rd DUI. But life happened, and she hadn't learned how to cope in minimum-security prison. I worked with her regularly over the course of about two years. She'd sober up, get a job, have a bad day at work, relapse... Finally I turned her over to her family (who previously had tried the "maybe mom will stop drinking if we ignore her" strategy), and she has really turned the corner now that she knows her kids are there to support her. Her son recently trusted her to watch her grandkids overnight. Prison didn't enable this transformation. (she originally fell into the alcoholic's pit when she found that vodka helped her anxiety better than the Xanax prescription. Benzodiazepines only work for about 4 weeks, before the patient's anxiety levels become worse than before.) I'm still thinking about whether I should say more about this passenger. The Difference Between Boys and Girls [1] is about another passenger who did quite well after meeting me. [1] http://www.taxiwars.org/2016/02/the-difference-between-boys-girls.html http://www.taxiwars.org/2016/02/the-difference-between-boys-...
ClayFerguson 10y ago
If we ever decriminalize Marijuana at the Federal level, that seems to me like it would mean millions of prisoners held for offenses involving only that drug would need to be set free. In my mind it is a horrible injustice to jail people for a relatively harmless substance like THC. I think in 100 years, more evolved humans will look back on the THC incarcerations the same way we now look upon the Salem Witch trials, or prohibition, etc. You know, one of those times where mankind just massively screwed up 'en mass' on sort of a societal level, and was unable to correct itself because the majority of people are brainwashed into believing whatever their parents told them about things. Sort of as a feed-back loop also, parents were unwilling to teach their children things that conflicted with societal norms. So society as a whole can fall into this kind of a 'rut' where getting out of it takes a long process of evolution of thought.
- chickenfries 10y ago
  This is an extremely reductive description of the drug war, and mass incarceration. You really can't talk about either without talking about race.
  - kolbe 10y ago
    What do you mean?
    - DanBC 10y ago
      White people and black people commit drug crime at roughly the same rate, but black people's drug crime attracts more policing and higher sentences.
- relaytheurgency 10y ago
  You would have to assume that all drug offenses were Marijuana related given the numbers. I think hundreds of thousands is more likely.
- dangmurderparty 10y ago
  I think it's disgusting, it plagues our communities, and its overall a bad thing. I'd support life sentences for first time offenders tbh. Dopers don't contribute to communities they are a part of, they rely on the state and give it more power to screw the rest of us over even more.
lintiness 10y ago
overlay economic growth and contraction, and there's your answer.
- WillPostForFood 10y ago
  There appears to be a only small correlation to the overall trend down, and economic growth. For example, crime declined in 2008 and 2009 when the economy was still flat and unemployment was high. Crime did tick up slightly leading into the recession, though not substantially. So while it has some impact, it doesn't look like it accounts for the broad trend down since the 90s.
austincheney 10y ago
The data indicates just how much Americans need to use drugs. Imagine how big the numbers get when you scoop in prescription drugs in addition to prohibited substances. Clearly drug use is more important to large number of Americans than risk of incarceration. Why does America have such a greater drug fascination than perhaps every other country?
- indigo_rex 10y ago
  I'm not confirming or denying that the US has maybe the worst drug problem in the world - seems plausible. But, on addiction (slightly different, but related), Rat Park is an interesting point of focus. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-real-cause-of-addicti_b_6506936.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-real-cause-of-...
  - timmaxw 10y ago
    Follow-up studies were unable to reproduce the Rat Park results. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9148292?dopt=Abstract https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9148292?dopt=Abstract https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2616610?dopt=Abstract https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2616610?dopt=Abstract
    - indigo_rex 10y ago
      I was not aware. Thank you for the links/correction!
- disposablezero 10y ago
  Arbitrary signals of class to abuse using the 13th ammendment loophole in for-profit prison-industrial plantations 2.0.
- gph 10y ago
  >Why does America have such a greater drug fascination than perhaps every other country? Just to throw out some random thoughts on this: -Historically a lot more expendable income, especially in the middle and working classes. The opportunity was there, especially during the 60s and 70s when a lot of countries were still rebuilding in an economic sense. -Our culture seems to put a lot more into individualism, especially in regards to an individuals right to the 'pursuit of happiness'. Somewhere along the way the 'pursuit of happiness' started to become centered around personal pleasure and hedonism. Think of the rock-star (or hip-hop) lifestyle that was glamorized over the past half-century. It mostly boils down to hedonism and extravagant material wealth. -The overwhelmingly authoritarian crack-down on drugs in America made it a cornerstone of the anti-establishment counter-culture movement. Though perhaps that's a bit backwards, the crack-down came about as a way to control and suppress the counter-culture. But that backfired in a big way. Drugs have practically become a rite of passage into being cool or rebellious. I bet half as many teenagers would try drugs if it weren't for that perception. -Americans largely enjoy simplicity and convenience. We don't want to make huge lifestyle changes. Take a pill or something to make the problems go away. Simple, easy, don't have to think about it. Gib me my soma. -The Media. A lot of TV shows and movies are centered around topics that are edgy, illegal, and/or borderline taboo because that's what people want to watch. We always have. Same way we rubberneck for a car crash. I think that's helped normalize drugs.
disposablezero 10y ago
Still far-and-away the highest incarceration rate per capita in the world, despite post-truth libertarian propaganda.
- acbabis 10y ago
  Who has a higher rate?
  - disposablezero 10y ago
    ??? Not one major country. The US is the highest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...
  - woof 10y ago
    https://www.statista.com/statistics/262962/countries-with-the-most-prisoners-per-100-000-inhabitants/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/262962/countries-with-th... I believe US numbers excludes juvenile detention, but hey...
starik36 10y ago
When they "drug related crimes"... does that mean these people are in prison for using/selling drugs or for robbing a liquor store to pay for drugs? Because that would skew the stats significantly.
- Spooky23 10y ago
  Both. The numbers are skewed. If you're sitting on your driveway in a chair with a beer and your neighbor backs his car into you, it's an alcohol related accident.
- gerbal 10y ago
  It probably means a crime where there is also a drug related indictment (or conviction, not sure which). Your example would be a crime of robbery, plus possession. I wonder how many cases of 'drug related crime' are just defendants who were arrested for another crime while they had small time possession?
alpsgolden 10y ago
Homicide rates are the key number to track. Other crime statistics have big reporting problems. Police can easily not report a crime (especially when there is pressure to make the stats look good), people stop calling police if they think the police won't do anything, etc. But it is very hard to hide a body. And homicide rates have risen substantially in the last two years (up 10.4% in 2015, and projected for 13.1% this year). These are the biggest increases in a generation. http://www.copinthehood.com/2016/09/spin-this-biggest-murder-increase-in-45.html http://www.copinthehood.com/2016/09/spin-this-biggest-murder... http://www.copinthehood.com/2016/11/homicide-is-up-and-its-not-trumps-fault.html http://www.copinthehood.com/2016/11/homicide-is-up-and-its-n... I'm not sure if the de-incarceration is responsible for the rise in crime. From my following, it seems like the police backing off in response to protests, riots, and consent decrees has a bigger impact. And I'm not a fan of prison -- there are better ways to deter crime and to keep violent criminals away from normal people. But I do notice that most times when I see a murder in the news, and the suspect has been apprehended, the suspect has a disturbingly long wrap sheet and I've wondered to myself, "how was this person allowed back out into civilized society."
- kapitza 10y ago
  Society's tolerance for crime is bizarrely irrational. There will be about 800 murders in Chicago this year -- yawn. Now imagine if 800 Chicagoans were killed by radiation leaks from a nuclear plant. "Well, you can't have electricity without plutonium. Do you want to turn everyone's lights off?" Or if 800 African-Americans were lynched Emmett Till style by KKK thugs. "Regrettable, but what are you going to do? And don't white people have legitimate complaints?" Even murder rates can be fudged -- turn the homicide into a "death investigation": http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/May-2014/Chicago-crime-rates/ http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/May-2014/Chicago-... Another point to keep in mind when you see these too-good-to-be-true stories is that criminal subcultures are actually quite conservative. When laws and policies change, it takes time for people to collectively figure out what they can get away with. This makes crime rates a lagging indicator -- we're still experiencing the positive effects of the crime crackdown of the '90s, not just in incarceration rates but in cultural behavior. The mid-'60s were another period when social scientists realized that punishment was a medieval anachronism. It took 10-20 years to see the full effects of these policies, and another 10 for the political backlash to get started. It seems like we're due for another round of this pendulum.
kapitza 10y ago
Well, it's beyond dispute that prison populations nationwide quadrupled -- that's the whole point of "mass incarceration." I don't know of any attempts to model how many crimes these inmates would commit if on the street. Perhaps they're all choirboys, and the real crisis would be a communion epidemic. You're just walking down the street and this 6-5 jacked dude with prison pecs be like "BODY OF CHRIST, BLOOD OF CHRIST!" as he's jamming a huge ass wafer into your face... social science certainly can't refute this hypothesis...
- sdenton4 10y ago
  It's violent crime which has dropped. Additionally, lengths of prison sentences have greatly increased, even as crime rates dropped, especially due to war on drugs legislation and three strikes laws. Get yourself educated, friend.
  - kapitza 10y ago
    I think the leading expert on this subject is NYT reporter Fox Butterfield: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/08/us/despite-drop-in-crime-an-increase-in-inmates.html http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/08/us/despite-drop-in-crime-a... In case it isn't obvious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_Butterfield#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_Butterfield#Criticism The late Dr. Richard Pryor also did some seminal fieldwork in the area: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7DhFhzkjcA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7DhFhzkjcA
    - sdenton4 10y ago
      The citation in the Wikipedia article is a link to a 'TimesWatch' blog post with no backing documentation. What you refer to is called the 'incapacitation' effect, and studies and certain accidental experiments suggest the effect isn't that big: http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2015/07/criminal-justice-and-mass-incarceration http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2015/07/cr...
      - kapitza 10y ago
Altay- 10y ago
This is such a pointless post. Why did it do so well here? Did any of you LOOK at the post and the stats/chart? 2% down since the peak. Who cares. Look at that chart. Its not even noticeable.
jack9 10y ago
http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations I'm really interested in Lead poisoning cases from the past decade graphed against this correlative coincidence that likely has some external variables, affecting both.

149 points by ascertain 10y ago

This is dandy and such, but it has a long, long way to go yet, still boasting the highest incarceration rates in the world: 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_ra... 2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/07/07/yes-u-s-locks-people-up-at-a-higher-rate-than-any-other-country/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/07/...

rhizome 10y ago
That's true, but the story is not that incarceration still exists, but to dispense with the argument that increased incarceration is necessary to reduce the crime rate.
- StavrosK 10y ago
  Or, rather, that reducing the sentence duration will not increase crime.
  - rhizome 10y ago
    I put sentence length and number of sentences in the general bucket of "incarceration volume."
    - StavrosK 10y ago
      I know, I'm just pointing out that the article said the opposite, ie not that longer sentences will lead to less crime, but that shorter sentences don't lead to more crime. Just picking nits.
      - rhizome 10y ago
        I think this is what the positive case of Poe's Law looks like.
- tertius 10y ago
  I would argue that there's a break even if you put those two variables in a bubble. I don't know who wouldn't.
jessaustin 10y ago
Perhaps a measure way out on the tail of a distribution can revert most of the way toward the mean without significantly affecting other, nonlinearly correlated measures? In that case, even the grimmest nightmares of racists and prison guard unions could still come to pass, just not yet...
rayiner 10y ago
The difference is a little less shocking when you adjust for crime rates. E.g. we have about 8-10x higher incarceration rate of Germany, but we also have more than 4x the murders per capita. (And the chicken came before the egg here. Violent crime started going up in the 1960s, but it wasn't until the late 1990s that the incarceration rate had gone up by the same proportion as the violent crime rate.) Americans aren't very generous when it comes to crime. In many European countries, even murder carries only about a 10-15 year sentence. On the other hand, I wonder if that's a product of our situation. The United States is fantastically violent in comparison to Europe, and always has been: http://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/homicide-rates-in-the-united-states-and-england-1900-2000-pinker-2011-jpg.jpg http://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/homicid.... E.g. Berlin is slightly bigger than Chicago. In a typical year, it might have 60-70 murders. Chicago in comparison had well over 700 this year. You can't look at the criminal justice system in the U.S. relative to our more enlightened European counterparts without keeping in mind that difference.
- filoeleven 10y ago
  > (And the chicken came before the egg here. Violent crime started going up in the 1960s, but it wasn't until the late 1990s that the incarceration rate had gone up by the same proportion as the violent crime rate.) Did the incarceration rate for violent crime go up, or was it the total incarceration rate due to e.g. increased prosecution of drug arrests? If it's the former, then it's great that more violent criminals are being caught and sentenced, but if it's the latter then it's just compounding the problem.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - rayiner 10y ago
    Even if we released all drug prisoners, the incarceration rate would only be about 15% lower: http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/releasing-drug-offenders-wont-end-mass-incarceration http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/releasing-drug-offenders-.... Meanwhile, it's about 6-7 times higher than what it was in the 1960s. Thus, almost all of that growth was not from drug offenses. It's not necessarily "great" that more violent criminals are being caught and sentenced. Many European countries manage just fine having e.g. 10-15 years maximum even for murder. Which is why I find the drug thing to be so frustrating. Drugs are not the major issue in the prison system. The real issue is whether just locking people up as a response to high crime rates actually works or not.

yusee 10y ago

Thanks, Obama!

MichaelBurge 10y ago

> Drug offenders accounted for half of federal prisoners and 16 percent of state prisoners in 2015. The decrease in the federal prison population was largely due to shorter drug sentences authorized by Congress and the U.S. Sentencing Commission. And this(https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/jmd/legacy/2013/09/07/prisons-detention.pdf https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/jmd/legacy/2013/...): > The FY 2015 Budget requests a total of $8.5 billion for federal prisons and detention And from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget > During fiscal year 2015, the Federal government received approximately $3.25 trillion in tax and fee revenue and had outlays (spending) of $3.7 trillion; The population of the US is 318.9 million, and (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...): > In total, 6,899,000 adults were under correctional supervision (probation, parole, jail, or prison) in 2013 – about 2.8% of adults (1 in 35) in the U.S. resident population. So our federal government would be 0.1% smaller in terms of expenses if it weren't responsible for drug offenses, but a full 1.4% of the population is under their control as a result. 2% of the population has lost its right to vote, so perhaps 1% due to drug offenses. That's about half the number of Jews in the US, which both political parties pander to quite heavily(making Israel a huge point of contention in any election). I guess that makes sense: drug reform is less visible than Israel in the news but still significant, though I haven't measured it to say that it's half. You're actually allowed to discriminate against people and take away their right to vote, but the states are punished by reducing their representational basis so they get fewer legislators and electors in elections. Since we have a winner-takes-all system, this encourages states to allow all minority groups to vote if they wouldn't tip the election. I was originally thinking it'd be strange for states to reduce their basis by as much as 1%, but it looks like there's an exemption for crimes: > Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State. I suppose, strictly speaking, you could have your right to vote stripped away if you get a parking ticket? I wonder if it's a gerrymandering scheme to throw Democrats in prison and take away their right to vote. (Democrats tend to be big on drugs) Since drug use counts towards the arrests but probably doesn't count towards the crime rate(it's a victimless crime, and the offender doesn't report it), that portion of it shouldn't affect the link described in the article. I'm not sure it's smart to directly compare percentages like the article does. If the crime rate is already low because all the criminals are locked up, then you'll have no change in crime rate and a low change in imprisonment. And you usually want to compare derivatives of the log-percentage, not the percentage directly.

taxicabjesus 10y ago

Punishment is almost always gratuitous. Aside from the handful of people whom society needs to be protected from, prison is always counter-productive. One of the recent stories linked here talks about how the brain doesn't really finish developing until the mid-20's, and that 20-something "kids" frequently get locked up for impulsiveness... I had a passenger who got fined $1000 for letting his medical marijuana card expire. In the future, this fellow has it on his record that he is a political criminal who didn't hurt anyone, and a zealous brain-dead prosecutor might use this prior conviction to advocate for prison. Another passenger had recently been released from a 2-year prison sentence. Her crime was sharing a single opiate pill with a friend. The cop was chuckling as he wrote her up. This one had gotten fat on prison food, which is not very nutritious. Several of her fellow inmates died from the neglect. (I guess police officers have to be rather disconnected from the consequences of their job. "I don't make the rules, I just enforce them" is a cop-out.) Nassim Nicholas Taleb (author of The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, etc) recently had this to say: Being nice counts the most when you are nice to people ignored by others, deprived of attention, or devoid of friends. The rest is largely theater. I tried to be nice to all my passengers, especially those who were having a rough day. One day I got a person going to the drive-through liquor store. I spent a few extra minutes talking to this person. After her taxi ride, I called back a time or two. There was a bit of hope in her voice - 'someone cares'. But on the third day she didn't answer, and I got distracted. Apparently she sobered up, but I didn't know that until later. After about two months this one started drinking again, found my card, and she called me because she just wanted someone nice to talk to. This one had tried (really hard) to stay sober after almost 2-years in prison for her 3rd DUI. But life happened, and she hadn't learned how to cope in minimum-security prison. I worked with her regularly over the course of about two years. She'd sober up, get a job, have a bad day at work, relapse... Finally I turned her over to her family (who previously had tried the "maybe mom will stop drinking if we ignore her" strategy), and she has really turned the corner now that she knows her kids are there to support her. Her son recently trusted her to watch her grandkids overnight. Prison didn't enable this transformation. (she originally fell into the alcoholic's pit when she found that vodka helped her anxiety better than the Xanax prescription. Benzodiazepines only work for about 4 weeks, before the patient's anxiety levels become worse than before.) I'm still thinking about whether I should say more about this passenger. The Difference Between Boys and Girls [1] is about another passenger who did quite well after meeting me. [1] http://www.taxiwars.org/2016/02/the-difference-between-boys-girls.html http://www.taxiwars.org/2016/02/the-difference-between-boys-...

ClayFerguson 10y ago

If we ever decriminalize Marijuana at the Federal level, that seems to me like it would mean millions of prisoners held for offenses involving only that drug would need to be set free. In my mind it is a horrible injustice to jail people for a relatively harmless substance like THC. I think in 100 years, more evolved humans will look back on the THC incarcerations the same way we now look upon the Salem Witch trials, or prohibition, etc. You know, one of those times where mankind just massively screwed up 'en mass' on sort of a societal level, and was unable to correct itself because the majority of people are brainwashed into believing whatever their parents told them about things. Sort of as a feed-back loop also, parents were unwilling to teach their children things that conflicted with societal norms. So society as a whole can fall into this kind of a 'rut' where getting out of it takes a long process of evolution of thought.

chickenfries 10y ago
This is an extremely reductive description of the drug war, and mass incarceration. You really can't talk about either without talking about race.
- kolbe 10y ago
  What do you mean?
  - DanBC 10y ago
    White people and black people commit drug crime at roughly the same rate, but black people's drug crime attracts more policing and higher sentences.
relaytheurgency 10y ago
You would have to assume that all drug offenses were Marijuana related given the numbers. I think hundreds of thousands is more likely.
dangmurderparty 10y ago
I think it's disgusting, it plagues our communities, and its overall a bad thing. I'd support life sentences for first time offenders tbh. Dopers don't contribute to communities they are a part of, they rely on the state and give it more power to screw the rest of us over even more.

lintiness 10y ago

overlay economic growth and contraction, and there's your answer.

WillPostForFood 10y ago
There appears to be a only small correlation to the overall trend down, and economic growth. For example, crime declined in 2008 and 2009 when the economy was still flat and unemployment was high. Crime did tick up slightly leading into the recession, though not substantially. So while it has some impact, it doesn't look like it accounts for the broad trend down since the 90s.

austincheney 10y ago

The data indicates just how much Americans need to use drugs. Imagine how big the numbers get when you scoop in prescription drugs in addition to prohibited substances. Clearly drug use is more important to large number of Americans than risk of incarceration. Why does America have such a greater drug fascination than perhaps every other country?

indigo_rex 10y ago
I'm not confirming or denying that the US has maybe the worst drug problem in the world - seems plausible. But, on addiction (slightly different, but related), Rat Park is an interesting point of focus. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-real-cause-of-addicti_b_6506936.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-real-cause-of-...
- timmaxw 10y ago
  Follow-up studies were unable to reproduce the Rat Park results. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9148292?dopt=Abstract https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9148292?dopt=Abstract https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2616610?dopt=Abstract https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2616610?dopt=Abstract
  - indigo_rex 10y ago
    I was not aware. Thank you for the links/correction!
disposablezero 10y ago
Arbitrary signals of class to abuse using the 13th ammendment loophole in for-profit prison-industrial plantations 2.0.
gph 10y ago
>Why does America have such a greater drug fascination than perhaps every other country? Just to throw out some random thoughts on this: -Historically a lot more expendable income, especially in the middle and working classes. The opportunity was there, especially during the 60s and 70s when a lot of countries were still rebuilding in an economic sense. -Our culture seems to put a lot more into individualism, especially in regards to an individuals right to the 'pursuit of happiness'. Somewhere along the way the 'pursuit of happiness' started to become centered around personal pleasure and hedonism. Think of the rock-star (or hip-hop) lifestyle that was glamorized over the past half-century. It mostly boils down to hedonism and extravagant material wealth. -The overwhelmingly authoritarian crack-down on drugs in America made it a cornerstone of the anti-establishment counter-culture movement. Though perhaps that's a bit backwards, the crack-down came about as a way to control and suppress the counter-culture. But that backfired in a big way. Drugs have practically become a rite of passage into being cool or rebellious. I bet half as many teenagers would try drugs if it weren't for that perception. -Americans largely enjoy simplicity and convenience. We don't want to make huge lifestyle changes. Take a pill or something to make the problems go away. Simple, easy, don't have to think about it. Gib me my soma. -The Media. A lot of TV shows and movies are centered around topics that are edgy, illegal, and/or borderline taboo because that's what people want to watch. We always have. Same way we rubberneck for a car crash. I think that's helped normalize drugs.

disposablezero 10y ago

Still far-and-away the highest incarceration rate per capita in the world, despite post-truth libertarian propaganda.

acbabis 10y ago
Who has a higher rate?
- disposablezero 10y ago
  ??? Not one major country. The US is the highest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...
- woof 10y ago
  https://www.statista.com/statistics/262962/countries-with-the-most-prisoners-per-100-000-inhabitants/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/262962/countries-with-th... I believe US numbers excludes juvenile detention, but hey...

starik36 10y ago

When they "drug related crimes"... does that mean these people are in prison for using/selling drugs or for robbing a liquor store to pay for drugs? Because that would skew the stats significantly.

Spooky23 10y ago
Both. The numbers are skewed. If you're sitting on your driveway in a chair with a beer and your neighbor backs his car into you, it's an alcohol related accident.
gerbal 10y ago
It probably means a crime where there is also a drug related indictment (or conviction, not sure which). Your example would be a crime of robbery, plus possession. I wonder how many cases of 'drug related crime' are just defendants who were arrested for another crime while they had small time possession?

alpsgolden 10y ago

Homicide rates are the key number to track. Other crime statistics have big reporting problems. Police can easily not report a crime (especially when there is pressure to make the stats look good), people stop calling police if they think the police won't do anything, etc. But it is very hard to hide a body. And homicide rates have risen substantially in the last two years (up 10.4% in 2015, and projected for 13.1% this year). These are the biggest increases in a generation. http://www.copinthehood.com/2016/09/spin-this-biggest-murder-increase-in-45.html http://www.copinthehood.com/2016/09/spin-this-biggest-murder... http://www.copinthehood.com/2016/11/homicide-is-up-and-its-not-trumps-fault.html http://www.copinthehood.com/2016/11/homicide-is-up-and-its-n... I'm not sure if the de-incarceration is responsible for the rise in crime. From my following, it seems like the police backing off in response to protests, riots, and consent decrees has a bigger impact. And I'm not a fan of prison -- there are better ways to deter crime and to keep violent criminals away from normal people. But I do notice that most times when I see a murder in the news, and the suspect has been apprehended, the suspect has a disturbingly long wrap sheet and I've wondered to myself, "how was this person allowed back out into civilized society."

kapitza 10y ago
Society's tolerance for crime is bizarrely irrational. There will be about 800 murders in Chicago this year -- yawn. Now imagine if 800 Chicagoans were killed by radiation leaks from a nuclear plant. "Well, you can't have electricity without plutonium. Do you want to turn everyone's lights off?" Or if 800 African-Americans were lynched Emmett Till style by KKK thugs. "Regrettable, but what are you going to do? And don't white people have legitimate complaints?" Even murder rates can be fudged -- turn the homicide into a "death investigation": http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/May-2014/Chicago-crime-rates/ http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/May-2014/Chicago-... Another point to keep in mind when you see these too-good-to-be-true stories is that criminal subcultures are actually quite conservative. When laws and policies change, it takes time for people to collectively figure out what they can get away with. This makes crime rates a lagging indicator -- we're still experiencing the positive effects of the crime crackdown of the '90s, not just in incarceration rates but in cultural behavior. The mid-'60s were another period when social scientists realized that punishment was a medieval anachronism. It took 10-20 years to see the full effects of these policies, and another 10 for the political backlash to get started. It seems like we're due for another round of this pendulum.

kapitza 10y ago

Well, it's beyond dispute that prison populations nationwide quadrupled -- that's the whole point of "mass incarceration." I don't know of any attempts to model how many crimes these inmates would commit if on the street. Perhaps they're all choirboys, and the real crisis would be a communion epidemic. You're just walking down the street and this 6-5 jacked dude with prison pecs be like "BODY OF CHRIST, BLOOD OF CHRIST!" as he's jamming a huge ass wafer into your face... social science certainly can't refute this hypothesis...

sdenton4 10y ago
It's violent crime which has dropped. Additionally, lengths of prison sentences have greatly increased, even as crime rates dropped, especially due to war on drugs legislation and three strikes laws. Get yourself educated, friend.
- kapitza 10y ago
  I think the leading expert on this subject is NYT reporter Fox Butterfield: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/08/us/despite-drop-in-crime-an-increase-in-inmates.html http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/08/us/despite-drop-in-crime-a... In case it isn't obvious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_Butterfield#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_Butterfield#Criticism The late Dr. Richard Pryor also did some seminal fieldwork in the area: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7DhFhzkjcA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7DhFhzkjcA
  - sdenton4 10y ago
    The citation in the Wikipedia article is a link to a 'TimesWatch' blog post with no backing documentation. What you refer to is called the 'incapacitation' effect, and studies and certain accidental experiments suggest the effect isn't that big: http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2015/07/criminal-justice-and-mass-incarceration http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2015/07/cr...
    - kapitza 10y ago

Altay- 10y ago

This is such a pointless post. Why did it do so well here? Did any of you LOOK at the post and the stats/chart? 2% down since the peak. Who cares. Look at that chart. Its not even noticeable.

jack9 10y ago

http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations I'm really interested in Lead poisoning cases from the past decade graphed against this correlative coincidence that likely has some external variables, affecting both.