3 ms·
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 hist
by 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 agoMurder 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 agoThat'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 agoMob 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 agoIt'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 agoRemove the US from the list of western countries and it must be better today, yes?
- verinus 3y agowell, you were beaten or killed for a lot of crimes- some only perceived. So, one may perceive incarceration as an improvement.
- moffkalast 3y agoTo 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 agoWe also no longer have exile as a punishment.