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US has one of the lower recidivism rates [1], so it's hard to support "Prison creates absolute animals". [1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings

US has one of the lower recidivism rates [1], so it's hard to support "Prison creates absolute animals". [1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/recidivism-rates-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/recidivis...

autoexec 4y ago
Strange, I see other sites list the US recidivism rate as one of the highest. > An estimated 68% of released prisoners were arrested within 3 years, 79% within 6 years, and 83% within 9 years. (https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/measuring-recidivism https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/measuring-recidivism) Norway is often claimed to be one of the lowest in the world at ~20% within 5 years.
- SideQuark 4y ago
  The data above had Norway at 20% at 2 years, so it would be surprising to still be 20% at 5 years. They're also low population, and quite wealthy from the giant oil fields national income. If you broke the 330 million in the US into 5 million sized chunks, you likely find well performing outliers like Norway too. That's the problem when assuming a small thing should scale.
  - autoexec 4y ago
    > The data above had Norway at 20% at 2 years, so it would be surprising to still be 20% at 5 years. This article puts it at 25% (https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-48885846 https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-48885846) which admittedly isn't 20, but isn't far off. Wikipedia has it at 20% after 5 years using 2016 data, but I haven't checked their sources on that (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_Norway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_Norway)
    - SideQuark 4y ago
      The article is a quote from someone talking offhand who is not a researcher. The wiki claim has three sources listed, none of which state the claim. The first claims 20%, no timeframe (so may well be the same 2 year value stated lots of places), the second sources the 20% in 2 years and a report (which looks to be a decent study, but does not have any claim of 25% at 5 years), and the third again has the 20% at 2 years with a linked report (the report also has that data). Not one is a very good source, and if the person speaking for an interview were right, you'd think that data would appear all the times the 20% at 2 appears. Given that, and that the data I cited was from a careful study [1] including lots of research from many countries (including the 20% at 2 years results from Norway), I tend to think the 25% is more or less made up wishful thinking. If it were defensible, it would be cited in other studies that aggregate all this data. When you find something online, try to determine it's original source. Someone simply saying something is not generally true unless it's from a reputable place that actually measured it. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6743246/pdf/wellcomeopenres-4-17992.pdf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6743246/pdf/wel...
HPsquared 4y ago
45% reimprisonment after 5 years isn't exactly low.
askvictor 4y ago
45% after 5 years hardly seems low; it's pretty similar to other countries in that list. The short-term recidivism is pretty low (though there isn't that level of data for most countries listed). The source publication concludes "that international comparisons are currently not valid" due to inconsistencies between countries' data and lack of transparency. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/278714801_A_Systematic_Review_of_Criminal_Recidivism_Rates_Worldwide_Current_Difficulties_and_Recommendations_for_Best_Practice https://www.researchgate.net/publication/278714801_A_Systema...
blululu 4y ago
Interesting - from this data it does appear that US is on the lower end of the spectrum. I will say that this dataset is very hard to parse - a lot of information and very little is apples to apples in a simple ranked chart. Also some countries (Denmark for instance) have fluctuated wildly in a span of ~10 years, which suggests that what is treated as a crime might be a driving variable here. I would be really curious to see a more detailed analysis of this data that segments the population by offender class (if you lump in non-violent and violent offenders I would imagine that you are making more of a commentary of the relative enforcement of these respective crimes).
rvnx 4y ago
Would be interesting to look at recidivism and crime rate in Japan or Oman ?

autoexec 4y ago

Strange, I see other sites list the US recidivism rate as one of the highest. > An estimated 68% of released prisoners were arrested within 3 years, 79% within 6 years, and 83% within 9 years. (https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/measuring-recidivism https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/measuring-recidivism) Norway is often claimed to be one of the lowest in the world at ~20% within 5 years.

SideQuark 4y ago
The data above had Norway at 20% at 2 years, so it would be surprising to still be 20% at 5 years. They're also low population, and quite wealthy from the giant oil fields national income. If you broke the 330 million in the US into 5 million sized chunks, you likely find well performing outliers like Norway too. That's the problem when assuming a small thing should scale.
- autoexec 4y ago
  > The data above had Norway at 20% at 2 years, so it would be surprising to still be 20% at 5 years. This article puts it at 25% (https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-48885846 https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-48885846) which admittedly isn't 20, but isn't far off. Wikipedia has it at 20% after 5 years using 2016 data, but I haven't checked their sources on that (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_Norway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_Norway)
  - SideQuark 4y ago
    The article is a quote from someone talking offhand who is not a researcher. The wiki claim has three sources listed, none of which state the claim. The first claims 20%, no timeframe (so may well be the same 2 year value stated lots of places), the second sources the 20% in 2 years and a report (which looks to be a decent study, but does not have any claim of 25% at 5 years), and the third again has the 20% at 2 years with a linked report (the report also has that data). Not one is a very good source, and if the person speaking for an interview were right, you'd think that data would appear all the times the 20% at 2 appears. Given that, and that the data I cited was from a careful study [1] including lots of research from many countries (including the 20% at 2 years results from Norway), I tend to think the 25% is more or less made up wishful thinking. If it were defensible, it would be cited in other studies that aggregate all this data. When you find something online, try to determine it's original source. Someone simply saying something is not generally true unless it's from a reputable place that actually measured it. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6743246/pdf/wellcomeopenres-4-17992.pdf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6743246/pdf/wel...

HPsquared 4y ago

45% reimprisonment after 5 years isn't exactly low.

askvictor 4y ago

45% after 5 years hardly seems low; it's pretty similar to other countries in that list. The short-term recidivism is pretty low (though there isn't that level of data for most countries listed). The source publication concludes "that international comparisons are currently not valid" due to inconsistencies between countries' data and lack of transparency. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/278714801_A_Systematic_Review_of_Criminal_Recidivism_Rates_Worldwide_Current_Difficulties_and_Recommendations_for_Best_Practice https://www.researchgate.net/publication/278714801_A_Systema...

blululu 4y ago

Interesting - from this data it does appear that US is on the lower end of the spectrum. I will say that this dataset is very hard to parse - a lot of information and very little is apples to apples in a simple ranked chart. Also some countries (Denmark for instance) have fluctuated wildly in a span of ~10 years, which suggests that what is treated as a crime might be a driving variable here. I would be really curious to see a more detailed analysis of this data that segments the population by offender class (if you lump in non-violent and violent offenders I would imagine that you are making more of a commentary of the relative enforcement of these respective crimes).

rvnx 4y ago

Would be interesting to look at recidivism and crime rate in Japan or Oman ?