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I guess you could lock up ~1% of the population indefinitely, but by the time you've gotten to that point something else has clearly gone wrong, since most affl
by _delirium 9y ago
I guess you could lock up ~1% of the population indefinitely, but by the time you've gotten to that point something else has clearly gone wrong, since most affluent countries are able to achieve relatively low violent crime rates without such widespread use of incarceration. If we were talking about 0.01% hard-core violent criminals then sure, just incarcerate them, but 3m+ people?
As far as I'm able to find, only two large countries in history have ever locked up more than even 0.5% of their population for extended periods of time: the USSR for approximately 15 years during the height of the Stalinist period (late 1930s to early 1950s), and the USA for about 30 years, from the late 1980s to present. So I wouldn't consider that a "normal" approach to managing crime.
- ComputerGuru 9y agoI don't think comparisons to "other affluent countries" are apt; the socioeconomic and cultural makeup of the United States is so starkly different from pretty much any other country (even our immediate neighbors to the north and south). In particular, the institution of slavery and perhaps even more so, the culture of segregation, condescension, and disdain that followed from The Reconstruction onwards resulted in such drastic dehumanization, disenfranchisement, and demoralization of a huge percentage of the population that has not been seen anywhere else in the world. No solution can be drafted that does not address this ugly stain on our history (continuing to the present) and still ever hope to work, and whitewashing history books and tiptoeing around this elephant in the room in the name of political correctness does us all a disservice.
- AdeptusAquinas 9y agoIt's been seen plenty of places in the world. Probably most, by area anyway. There are still places where a significant portion of the population are not only disdained and disenfranchised, but actively killed without much consequence: the Rohingya for a current example, or the lowest castes in India
- ComputerGuru 9y agoAbsolutely. But few would make comparisons or draw parallels to them, whereas they'll be quick to do so for the Nordic nations or similar.