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The US is the most punitive major country in the world, yet we still have crime.

vlovich123 3y ago
That’s not the interesting bit. Countries with less punitive laws have better crime stats although of course you could argue causation goes the other way.
- jonhohle 3y ago
  On the lower end, if you know doing common activity X (say possession) will get you a punishment as severe as more impactful crime Y (breaking and entering), what difference does it make? On the upper end, if you have no priors and your career and family will be blown up because you want to do a political favor for someone that results in destroying the public trust, it probably does matter.
  - vlovich123 3y ago
    > On the upper end, if you have no priors and your career and family will be blown up because you want to do a political favor for someone that results in destroying the public trust, it probably does matter Given how frequently this happens I wouldn’t be so sure. You also have to care about destroying the public trust and this is literally a thread about yet another instance of the FBI destroying public trust. Also, you don’t have to have a corrupt intent to take actions that destroy public trust.
jonhohle 3y ago
That flows with what I’ve said: rules for thee and not for me. As a private citizen my city, county, state, or federal enforcement agencies would have no issue charging me and putting their best effort toward conviction and sentencing. Meanwhile when those same agencies have very public crimes within their ranks abusing the power they’ve been given, nothing happens. How did New York deal with crime in the late 90s? Not by ignoring it.
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  > those same agencies have very public crimes within their ranks Do you think the problem is too much transparency? To use your example of the NYPD in the 90's (though I think you've probably got the wrong part of the decade if you're looking for the high water mark of crime), was it notably less corrupt than it is today, or was it just more opaque? But how did the NYPD deal with crime in the 90's? Wasn't it by the kinds of privacy abuses called out in this report? By shaking down suspected criminals through stop and frisk?
  - jonhohle 3y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_New_York_City https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_New_York_City Violent crime in NYC dropped precipitously with the “Broken Windows” style of law enforcement during Giuliani’s terms as mayor (1994-2002). The advertised theory was to enforce even small crimes like property owners leaving broken windows unrepaired. Hypothetically, the expectation that laws are being enforced makes people more likely to obey laws at all levels. (jokingly: or maybe people were so busy coming into compliance that they ran out of time for murder.) There’s obviously debate, criticism, etc., regarding the cause but the theory has been applied to programming among other places with some success.
    - hotpotamus 3y ago
      Do you think the widespread inability to enforce mask mandates might have lessened peoples' likelihood to obey laws at all levels? Seems a bit analogous to broken windows, no? And timely.
      - koolba 3y ago
        Are you comparing a useless gesture of compliance to theft or willful property damage?
        hotpotamus 3y ago
        The example given was property owners complying with covering broken windows, wasn’t it? Does that seem like a useful gesture of compliance? I believe the idea is more that it sets an example of compliance with authority, but I agree that the whole concepts seems a bit questionable to me.
newsclues 3y ago
Aren't there countries that still do public executions and corporal punishment? Incarcerations isn't the only form of punishment.
- j33zusjuice 3y ago
  Yes, but as you know, this discussion isn’t to prove that the US is the worst country in the world. We don’t even consider countries like those that you’re talking about in these conversations because they’re so behind and barbaric. What’s the point of even bringing this up except to distract from the discussion? What are you trying to show or prove with this? Remind everyone of things they already know? Your comment is an attempt to invalidate the legitimacy of the concerns posed above, and nothing more. Most of us though we’d move past the idea that murdering citizens is barbaric, and has no place in the world, yet people like you insist on telling us that we’re OK because we aren’t that, or that it’s not so bad here because it could be so much worse. That’s not useful in any sense.
  - dang 3y ago
    Can you please not use HN for political or national or ideological flamewar? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for, so we're trying to avoid it here. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- analog31 3y ago
  I'm not sure that the quantity (per capita or whatever) of those things exceeds the quantity of incarceration and things like police violence in the US. But even being middle-of-the-road in terms of barbarism is nothing to write home about.
- csomar 3y ago
  Few countries though since China does it, it affects a big population of the world. Here is the list for 2021 from Wikipedia. There are only two "first-world" countries there. At least 18 countries performed executions in 2021:[13][36][37] Americas (1 country): United States (11) Asia-Pacific (5 countries): Bangladesh (5), China (unknown), Japan (3), North Korea (unknown), Vietnam (unknown) Europe (1 country): Belarus (1+) Middle East and North Africa (8 countries): Egypt (83+), Iran (314+), Iraq (17+), Oman (unknown), Saudi Arabia (65), Syria (24+), UAE (1+), Yemen (14+) Sub-Saharan Africa (3 countries): Botswana (3), Somalia (21+), South Sudan (9+)
wongarsu 3y ago
Because the US has an aversion to even think about the systematic reasons that cause crime, and prefers to pretend it's only about personal failings. People who do crime are to be caught, punished, and punished some more (unless they are high-class, good looking or part of a government agency, etc). Yet at the same time the US seems to almost maliciously engineer society to push people into hopeless situations where crime looks like a good way to get by.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  I'm sorry but an upvote is an insufficient reaction to this comment. In decades of considering State privacy abuses and their roots, I haven't come across an analysis that so succinctly encapsulates the whole of causes+outcomes as this one. It is one of the most Modern America things I have ever read.
- prottog 3y ago
  > Because the US has an aversion to even think about the systematic reasons that cause crime, and prefers to pretend it's only about personal failings. A lot of people think the other way around, where it's unfathomable that anyone would commit a crime of their own volition were it not for the weight of an unjust world upon them.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - bawolff 3y ago
    Does it matter? If people are opportunistic then you should remove the systemic issues that make crime seem like a good risk. If people are desperate you should do the same thing. Either way the correct response is to make crime not seem like the best option for someone to do.
    - vxNsr 3y ago
      You seem to have spent a lot of time considering this issue, how would you go about solving it?
dumpsterlid 3y ago
[dead]
tenpies 3y ago
> The US is the most punitive major country in the world For this statement to hold, it requires the most absurd definition of "punitive" imaginable. There are countries where talking negatively about the wrong people is grounds for execution. There are countries where theft is punished by amputation of a limb. There are countries where not flushing a public toilet that you used, is a punishable offense. All of these countries are much more punitive, and almost all of them have much less crime than the United States.
- chmod775 3y ago
  The US has the fifth highest per capita prison population in the world. The four countries with a higher per capita population are: El Salvador, Rwanda, Turkmenistan, and Cuba. (Omitting American Samoa, because that's a US territory). None of those are major countries, so the statement "The US is the most punitive major country in the world" absolutely holds water. If you want an idea of how crazy high incarceration rates are in the states, just compare the prison population per 100,000 inhabitants with its neighbors: Canada - 85 Mexico - 174 USA - 505 On a side note I wonder how many people would rather lose a limb than spend a decade in US prison.
  - refurb 3y ago
    A big reason for that is that "prison population" is defined differently by different countries. China's prison population is lower, but they have "administrative detention" which isn't included. How to lie with statistics.
- csomar 3y ago
  That's because you are buying into western propaganda. These countries operate on some kind of "hype" of law. The odds that you'll go to jail in Singapore for committing a "punishable" offense is really low. I was surprised how lax Singapore is given its reputation. It seems that they are holding the status quo by that reputation rather than the enforcement of it. This is the same for many other countries but not the case for the US. Also your first two examples applies to really small list of countries (Iran and S.A.) and their current governments are the disgrace of the world and are not really an example to take (like going too extreme and something the US shouldn't "I guess" be compared too).
Nextgrid 3y ago
Punishment is big business and criminals are your "total addressable market". Lawyers, law enforcement, prisons, security companies, etc and anyone providing services to them rely on there being a steady supply of crime and criminals to stay in business. Reducing crime isn't actually in the establishment's best interest.

That’s not the interesting bit. Countries with less punitive laws have better crime stats although of course you could argue causation goes the other way.

jonhohle 3y ago
On the lower end, if you know doing common activity X (say possession) will get you a punishment as severe as more impactful crime Y (breaking and entering), what difference does it make? On the upper end, if you have no priors and your career and family will be blown up because you want to do a political favor for someone that results in destroying the public trust, it probably does matter.
- vlovich123 3y ago
  > On the upper end, if you have no priors and your career and family will be blown up because you want to do a political favor for someone that results in destroying the public trust, it probably does matter Given how frequently this happens I wouldn’t be so sure. You also have to care about destroying the public trust and this is literally a thread about yet another instance of the FBI destroying public trust. Also, you don’t have to have a corrupt intent to take actions that destroy public trust.

jonhohle 3y ago

That flows with what I’ve said: rules for thee and not for me. As a private citizen my city, county, state, or federal enforcement agencies would have no issue charging me and putting their best effort toward conviction and sentencing. Meanwhile when those same agencies have very public crimes within their ranks abusing the power they’ve been given, nothing happens. How did New York deal with crime in the late 90s? Not by ignoring it.

hotpotamus 3y ago
> those same agencies have very public crimes within their ranks Do you think the problem is too much transparency? To use your example of the NYPD in the 90's (though I think you've probably got the wrong part of the decade if you're looking for the high water mark of crime), was it notably less corrupt than it is today, or was it just more opaque? But how did the NYPD deal with crime in the 90's? Wasn't it by the kinds of privacy abuses called out in this report? By shaking down suspected criminals through stop and frisk?
- jonhohle 3y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_New_York_City https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_New_York_City Violent crime in NYC dropped precipitously with the “Broken Windows” style of law enforcement during Giuliani’s terms as mayor (1994-2002). The advertised theory was to enforce even small crimes like property owners leaving broken windows unrepaired. Hypothetically, the expectation that laws are being enforced makes people more likely to obey laws at all levels. (jokingly: or maybe people were so busy coming into compliance that they ran out of time for murder.) There’s obviously debate, criticism, etc., regarding the cause but the theory has been applied to programming among other places with some success.
  - hotpotamus 3y ago
    Do you think the widespread inability to enforce mask mandates might have lessened peoples' likelihood to obey laws at all levels? Seems a bit analogous to broken windows, no? And timely.
    - koolba 3y ago
      Are you comparing a useless gesture of compliance to theft or willful property damage?
      - hotpotamus 3y ago
        The example given was property owners complying with covering broken windows, wasn’t it? Does that seem like a useful gesture of compliance? I believe the idea is more that it sets an example of compliance with authority, but I agree that the whole concepts seems a bit questionable to me.

newsclues 3y ago

Aren't there countries that still do public executions and corporal punishment? Incarcerations isn't the only form of punishment.

j33zusjuice 3y ago
Yes, but as you know, this discussion isn’t to prove that the US is the worst country in the world. We don’t even consider countries like those that you’re talking about in these conversations because they’re so behind and barbaric. What’s the point of even bringing this up except to distract from the discussion? What are you trying to show or prove with this? Remind everyone of things they already know? Your comment is an attempt to invalidate the legitimacy of the concerns posed above, and nothing more. Most of us though we’d move past the idea that murdering citizens is barbaric, and has no place in the world, yet people like you insist on telling us that we’re OK because we aren’t that, or that it’s not so bad here because it could be so much worse. That’s not useful in any sense.
- dang 3y ago
  Can you please not use HN for political or national or ideological flamewar? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for, so we're trying to avoid it here. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
analog31 3y ago
I'm not sure that the quantity (per capita or whatever) of those things exceeds the quantity of incarceration and things like police violence in the US. But even being middle-of-the-road in terms of barbarism is nothing to write home about.
csomar 3y ago
Few countries though since China does it, it affects a big population of the world. Here is the list for 2021 from Wikipedia. There are only two "first-world" countries there. At least 18 countries performed executions in 2021:[13][36][37] Americas (1 country): United States (11) Asia-Pacific (5 countries): Bangladesh (5), China (unknown), Japan (3), North Korea (unknown), Vietnam (unknown) Europe (1 country): Belarus (1+) Middle East and North Africa (8 countries): Egypt (83+), Iran (314+), Iraq (17+), Oman (unknown), Saudi Arabia (65), Syria (24+), UAE (1+), Yemen (14+) Sub-Saharan Africa (3 countries): Botswana (3), Somalia (21+), South Sudan (9+)

wongarsu 3y ago

Because the US has an aversion to even think about the systematic reasons that cause crime, and prefers to pretend it's only about personal failings. People who do crime are to be caught, punished, and punished some more (unless they are high-class, good looking or part of a government agency, etc). Yet at the same time the US seems to almost maliciously engineer society to push people into hopeless situations where crime looks like a good way to get by.

WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
I'm sorry but an upvote is an insufficient reaction to this comment. In decades of considering State privacy abuses and their roots, I haven't come across an analysis that so succinctly encapsulates the whole of causes+outcomes as this one. It is one of the most Modern America things I have ever read.
prottog 3y ago
> Because the US has an aversion to even think about the systematic reasons that cause crime, and prefers to pretend it's only about personal failings. A lot of people think the other way around, where it's unfathomable that anyone would commit a crime of their own volition were it not for the weight of an unjust world upon them.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- bawolff 3y ago
  Does it matter? If people are opportunistic then you should remove the systemic issues that make crime seem like a good risk. If people are desperate you should do the same thing. Either way the correct response is to make crime not seem like the best option for someone to do.
  - vxNsr 3y ago
    You seem to have spent a lot of time considering this issue, how would you go about solving it?

dumpsterlid 3y ago

[dead]

tenpies 3y ago

> The US is the most punitive major country in the world For this statement to hold, it requires the most absurd definition of "punitive" imaginable. There are countries where talking negatively about the wrong people is grounds for execution. There are countries where theft is punished by amputation of a limb. There are countries where not flushing a public toilet that you used, is a punishable offense. All of these countries are much more punitive, and almost all of them have much less crime than the United States.

chmod775 3y ago
The US has the fifth highest per capita prison population in the world. The four countries with a higher per capita population are: El Salvador, Rwanda, Turkmenistan, and Cuba. (Omitting American Samoa, because that's a US territory). None of those are major countries, so the statement "The US is the most punitive major country in the world" absolutely holds water. If you want an idea of how crazy high incarceration rates are in the states, just compare the prison population per 100,000 inhabitants with its neighbors: Canada - 85 Mexico - 174 USA - 505 On a side note I wonder how many people would rather lose a limb than spend a decade in US prison.
- refurb 3y ago
  A big reason for that is that "prison population" is defined differently by different countries. China's prison population is lower, but they have "administrative detention" which isn't included. How to lie with statistics.
csomar 3y ago
That's because you are buying into western propaganda. These countries operate on some kind of "hype" of law. The odds that you'll go to jail in Singapore for committing a "punishable" offense is really low. I was surprised how lax Singapore is given its reputation. It seems that they are holding the status quo by that reputation rather than the enforcement of it. This is the same for many other countries but not the case for the US. Also your first two examples applies to really small list of countries (Iran and S.A.) and their current governments are the disgrace of the world and are not really an example to take (like going too extreme and something the US shouldn't "I guess" be compared too).

Nextgrid 3y ago

Punishment is big business and criminals are your "total addressable market". Lawyers, law enforcement, prisons, security companies, etc and anyone providing services to them rely on there being a steady supply of crime and criminals to stay in business. Reducing crime isn't actually in the establishment's best interest.