3 ms·

Source? Incarceration rate seems to be going down in western countries: https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/07/1096042 https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/07/109604

by WA 3y ago

Source? Incarceration rate seems to be going down in western countries: https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/07/1096042 https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/07/1096042

p-e-w 3y ago
The scale of incarceration is still unprecedented. A reduction by 27 percent doesn't change that. Imprisonment was an extremely rare phenomenon for much of history (as was police, for that matter). Today's incarceration rates would have to be reduced by 99+% in order to reach pre-modern levels, where large cities often had only a handful of cells in total, and rural areas had none at all.
- lm28469 3y ago
  > Imprisonment was an extremely rare phenomenon for much of history (as was police, for that matter). And crimes weren't solved, people not prosecuted, criminals not punished For much of history life didn't even exist, that's not an argument for or against anything
  - watwut 3y ago
    Murder clearance rates went DOWN last decades in USA. Less of major crime is solved. Plus majority of it never went through tria, because trial is just too much risk. So, there are not all that many actual checks and balances
    - lm28469 3y ago
      That's a multi faceted problem. Murder rates also were halves since the 80s in the US, it's not necessarily the same type of criminality In other countries the clearance rates are as high as ever. The US is an exception in many aspects in the West, closer to third world countries depending on what metric you look at > overall, findings showed that the clearance rate in Finland and Switzerland in the years of analysis was very high, in some years of the analysis even reaching 100 percent. Internationally, these rates are extraordinary high, even in comparison with other European countries such as Italy (67 percent and, later, 78 percent) , Estonia (80 percent), England & Wales (85 percent) and France (80 percent) https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1477370818764840 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14773708187648...
  - b112 3y ago
    Mob justice existed too. And execution for minor crime, with king's justice. Modern western police forces, with all their foibles, are far, far, far better than mob justice. Are people even aware of history, and how absolutely bloody it was, with an immense lack of personal rights? Fixing what's broken now is good. Trying to pretend it is worse than what was before, is absolutely absurd and laughable.
    - the_af 3y ago
      It's not so clear cut. At least admit that a lot of thought has been given to this, none the least by Foucalt's famous essay on this topic, Discipline and Punish. Foucalt has his critics, but it's not immediately obvious that the massive incarceration problem in some Western nations is better than public execution at the whim of monarchs. And some forms of torture, Foucalt argued, have changed from the theatrical and public to the more subdued torture of everyday lives of prison inmates.
      - Dah00n 3y ago
        Remove the US from the list of western countries and it must be better today, yes?
- verinus 3y ago
  well, you were beaten or killed for a lot of crimes- some only perceived. So, one may perceive incarceration as an improvement.
- moffkalast 3y ago
  To be fair, for much of history there weren't enough resources for everyone, much less for keeping people fed for free in a prison for decades. For serious crimes you just got executed as soon as possible.
  - saalweachter 3y ago
    We also no longer have exile as a punishment.
yawpitch 3y ago
Their source could be your source, which you seem to be very seriously misreading. > As the global population grew 21 per cent, between 2000 and 2019, the number of prisoners worldwide jumped by more than 25 per cent, according to the UNODC data. So, worldwide trend is upward. > While Northern America, Sub-Saharan Africa and Eastern Europe have experienced a long-term decrease in imprisonment rates of up to 27 per cent, other regions and countries, such as Latin America, Australia and New Zealand, have seen up to 68 per cent growth over the last two decades, the study revealed. So apparently your definition of “western countries” includes sub-Saharan Africa but excludes most of Europe and all of Australia and New Zealand? Overall your own source supports their point and contradicts your own.
- seszett 3y ago
  > So apparently your definition of “western countries” includes sub-Saharan Africa but excludes most of Europe and all of Australia and New Zealand? To be honest the text you are quoting doesn't talk about Western Europe at all, and I think if you exclude Western Europe, then "Northern America + Eastern Europe" is most of what remains of "western countries". Australia and New Zealand, while part of western countries, are so small that they are basically insignificant for statistics. The data in the source[0], though, says the number of prisoners in Europe as a whole (as well as Northern America) has decreased (Figures 10, 12, and 13) confirming what GP said. Eastern Europe is quoted specifically because the decrease has been much more important (basically, the numbers are becoming similar to Western Europe). There's no question that the trend in the West has been a decrease in incarceration rate, with Australia and New Zealand clear outliers. [0]https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/statistics/DataMatters1_prison.pdf https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/statistics...
  - yawpitch 3y ago
    If you exclude Western Europe and simply ignore Australia and New Zealand you’ve abandoned any reasonable conception of “the West” altogether. Regardless, cherry-picking even such an incredibly gerrymandered “West” ignores the entire point of the source: the human population in prison has risen faster than the human population itself… pointing to minor improvements in the world’s largest prison state and what remains of the ex-Soviet gulag system states while ignoring considerably larger regressions in, for example, a nation colonized specifically to be a prison does nothing to contradict that fact.
NotSuspicious 3y ago
Unfortunate. It frankly needs to go up in Western countries to get to half-decent crime rates.

by WA 3y ago

Source? Incarceration rate seems to be going down in western countries: https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/07/1096042 https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/07/1096042

p-e-w 3y ago

The scale of incarceration is still unprecedented. A reduction by 27 percent doesn't change that. Imprisonment was an extremely rare phenomenon for much of history (as was police, for that matter). Today's incarceration rates would have to be reduced by 99+% in order to reach pre-modern levels, where large cities often had only a handful of cells in total, and rural areas had none at all.

lm28469 3y ago
> Imprisonment was an extremely rare phenomenon for much of history (as was police, for that matter). And crimes weren't solved, people not prosecuted, criminals not punished For much of history life didn't even exist, that's not an argument for or against anything
- watwut 3y ago
  Murder clearance rates went DOWN last decades in USA. Less of major crime is solved. Plus majority of it never went through tria, because trial is just too much risk. So, there are not all that many actual checks and balances
  - lm28469 3y ago
    That's a multi faceted problem. Murder rates also were halves since the 80s in the US, it's not necessarily the same type of criminality In other countries the clearance rates are as high as ever. The US is an exception in many aspects in the West, closer to third world countries depending on what metric you look at > overall, findings showed that the clearance rate in Finland and Switzerland in the years of analysis was very high, in some years of the analysis even reaching 100 percent. Internationally, these rates are extraordinary high, even in comparison with other European countries such as Italy (67 percent and, later, 78 percent) , Estonia (80 percent), England & Wales (85 percent) and France (80 percent) https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1477370818764840 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14773708187648...
- b112 3y ago
  Mob justice existed too. And execution for minor crime, with king's justice. Modern western police forces, with all their foibles, are far, far, far better than mob justice. Are people even aware of history, and how absolutely bloody it was, with an immense lack of personal rights? Fixing what's broken now is good. Trying to pretend it is worse than what was before, is absolutely absurd and laughable.
  - the_af 3y ago
    It's not so clear cut. At least admit that a lot of thought has been given to this, none the least by Foucalt's famous essay on this topic, Discipline and Punish. Foucalt has his critics, but it's not immediately obvious that the massive incarceration problem in some Western nations is better than public execution at the whim of monarchs. And some forms of torture, Foucalt argued, have changed from the theatrical and public to the more subdued torture of everyday lives of prison inmates.
    - Dah00n 3y ago
      Remove the US from the list of western countries and it must be better today, yes?
verinus 3y ago
well, you were beaten or killed for a lot of crimes- some only perceived. So, one may perceive incarceration as an improvement.
moffkalast 3y ago
To be fair, for much of history there weren't enough resources for everyone, much less for keeping people fed for free in a prison for decades. For serious crimes you just got executed as soon as possible.
- saalweachter 3y ago
  We also no longer have exile as a punishment.

yawpitch 3y ago

Their source could be your source, which you seem to be very seriously misreading. > As the global population grew 21 per cent, between 2000 and 2019, the number of prisoners worldwide jumped by more than 25 per cent, according to the UNODC data. So, worldwide trend is upward. > While Northern America, Sub-Saharan Africa and Eastern Europe have experienced a long-term decrease in imprisonment rates of up to 27 per cent, other regions and countries, such as Latin America, Australia and New Zealand, have seen up to 68 per cent growth over the last two decades, the study revealed. So apparently your definition of “western countries” includes sub-Saharan Africa but excludes most of Europe and all of Australia and New Zealand? Overall your own source supports their point and contradicts your own.

seszett 3y ago
> So apparently your definition of “western countries” includes sub-Saharan Africa but excludes most of Europe and all of Australia and New Zealand? To be honest the text you are quoting doesn't talk about Western Europe at all, and I think if you exclude Western Europe, then "Northern America + Eastern Europe" is most of what remains of "western countries". Australia and New Zealand, while part of western countries, are so small that they are basically insignificant for statistics. The data in the source[0], though, says the number of prisoners in Europe as a whole (as well as Northern America) has decreased (Figures 10, 12, and 13) confirming what GP said. Eastern Europe is quoted specifically because the decrease has been much more important (basically, the numbers are becoming similar to Western Europe). There's no question that the trend in the West has been a decrease in incarceration rate, with Australia and New Zealand clear outliers. [0]https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/statistics/DataMatters1_prison.pdf https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/statistics...
- yawpitch 3y ago
  If you exclude Western Europe and simply ignore Australia and New Zealand you’ve abandoned any reasonable conception of “the West” altogether. Regardless, cherry-picking even such an incredibly gerrymandered “West” ignores the entire point of the source: the human population in prison has risen faster than the human population itself… pointing to minor improvements in the world’s largest prison state and what remains of the ex-Soviet gulag system states while ignoring considerably larger regressions in, for example, a nation colonized specifically to be a prison does nothing to contradict that fact.

NotSuspicious 3y ago

Unfortunate. It frankly needs to go up in Western countries to get to half-decent crime rates.