5 ms·

It would be hard to really know, but I'm curious what percentage of the total US prison population is innocent. Per capita prison rate is still around 5 in 1000

by causal 3y ago

It would be hard to really know, but I'm curious what percentage of the total US prison population is innocent. Per capita prison rate is still around 5 in 1000 according to Wikipedia, which is very high for the developed world.

graphe 3y ago
Innocent meaning they didn’t do the specific crime, or innocent as in someone with a clean record that was railroaded? If you’re looking for the criminal that killed a bunch of people but not that specific case it’s not that uncommon. If you’re looking for a squeaky clean guy that was there at the wrong place at the wrong time it’s very rare. Most criminals are repeat offenders.
- Zigurd 3y ago
  Most businesses create and cultivate repeat customers from specific target markets. The US prison industrial complex is adept at this.
  - graphe 3y ago
    What is the conclusion you’re making?
    - mistrial9 3y ago
      it is a revolving door in real ways
      - Zigurd 3y ago
        It starts with selective enforcement and repeated police contact with young people. That's how the business of imprisonment fills the funnel in the US.
- klyrs 3y ago
  This is magical thinking. We know the guy was bad so we locked him up for a crime. We don't know if we pinned the right crime on him or not, but he's locked away safely now so he must be bad. If this is your genuine belief, it begs the question: why are Americans, on average, such terrible people when compared to other first world citizens?
  - graphe 3y ago
    You don’t just decide to lock someone up for a crime. Police gather evidence, give it to a prosecutor, the prosecutor makes a case (or not) and they will either go to trial or plea, then it’s in the hands of a jury or judge. Claiming guilt to plea down to avoid a case is a problem, but that isn’t the case you’re making. There’s nothing magical about criminal prosecution.
    - klyrs 3y ago
      > If you’re looking for the criminal that killed a bunch of people but not that specific case it’s not that uncommon. Here you're saying that mass-murderers are common, but despite their extensive trails of corpses, we can't pin the actual crime on an actual criminal. No, there's nothing magical about criminal prosecution here, it's no more than bullshit as you've described it. Back to my question, why do you think mass-murderers are so incredibly overrepresented in the American population?
      - graphe 3y ago
        Blame laws like fruit of the poisoned tree. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree If you want to act in bad faith and call it magic and bullshit feel free to grandstand.
        qingcharles 3y ago
        What is wrong with the poisonous tree doctrine in your opinion? I find it isn't used widely enough against police and prosecutor misconduct. There are too many ways out of it for them.
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  I believe, and I think the data supports, that the US prison population is due to the number of laws we have, and the harshness of our penalties. A false conviction rate of a few percent does not explain an order of magnitude level differences in incarceration between countries. I think an interesting question is what portion of the US population would be incarcerated if the totality of our laws were applied to everyone
  - graphe 3y ago
    US law is applied unequally. It’s very harsh, sometimes random and I’ve heard all Americans break the law daily. We would all be in jail and sometimes prison. US crime is like driving across the only road that is covered in black ice with toll trolls on the way, you have to cross it, you know it’s there, and you can do it carefully but you never know what will happen or where you’ll slip up.
  - qingcharles 3y ago
    Opinion of a criminal: I don't think there are too many criminal laws at the State level. That is definitely not the reason for high incarceration rates. The guys who are in prison didn't randomly trip over a law they didn't know existed. 99% of the laws are the same as they've been since pre-history: don't hurt someone, don't steal etc. Sentencing to prison is probably the key problem. Criminals need help. Outright punishment just hardens them. From my experience the bulk of crime has its origin in mental illnesses which are not being treated. The medical system in the USA almost certainly is the cause of this.
    - pdonis 3y ago
      What about non-violent drug possession? AFAIK that all by itself accounts for a significant number of incarcerated people. Laws criminalizing that are a product of the war on drugs, not embodying something in statute that's been a common law crime throughout human history.
      - s1artibartfast 3y ago
- moate 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - graphe 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - moate 3y ago
      [flagged]
- andrewla 3y ago
  This is frequently cited by law enforcement and criminal justice officials, but this is an impossible bar to set, because they have not been convicted of those other unspecified crimes. The excuse "he maybe didn't rob this store, but he did rob those other stores, so let's nudge the case a bit", even if done in good faith by law enforcement, is still fishy, because ... why not convict them instead for the other crimes being purported, since we're more confident about them? In many cases I think this is likely to be a post facto rationalization for the fact that the case against the suspect is weaker than initially thought but represents a great deal of manpower that feels wasted if the suspect is not convicted.
  - graphe 3y ago
    That definitely happens but lots of evidence is thrown out and they are looking at throwing the law at him. A famous case is Al Capone. I’m not calling it right or wrong, it’s just what happens with the system in place. It’s also shown to the public to convict them. The jury has the ability to ‘throw’ the case as they did in the case of OJ.
    - pc86 3y ago
      Except Al Capone actually did what he went to prison for. Yeah he did a lot of other stuff nobody could prove to the standard of a courtroom, but what you're talking about is someone "knows" Al Capone is bad, so they fabricate crimes and evidence and frame him for those in order to send him to prison. That would still be wrong. This is a feature, not a bug.
      - lesuorac 3y ago
        A feature to the prosector maybe but a bug to the public at large. 1) People do convince themselves of falsehoods; the person may not actually have done that initial crime. 2) Being able to trump up lessor charges can be (ab)used even if the person didn't commit an initial crime but instead is just a ~journalist~ nuisance.
      - denton-scratch 3y ago
Lord-Jobo 3y ago
This is an obviously tough subject to get precise data on, but dark figure analysis and innocence project data indicates that the CONVICTED innocent percentage is 1-3%, i have seen individual studies peak at 7% but those are outliers and not likely to be the real number. this seems really good until you realize its 20,000-140,000 people in prison right now. that are innocent. and it gets REALLY bleak when you look at the 400,000 people who are locked up at any given time, pretrial, in jail. who are legally innocent. The proportion of individuals held in jail pending trial increased from 56 percent of the jail population in 2000 to 66 percent in 2018 (https://www.brookings.edu/articles/a-better-path-forward-for-criminal-justice-reimagining-pretrial-and-sentencing/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/a-better-path-forward-for...) so, of the roughly 2 million people behind any bars at any given time, 400,000-500,000 are innocent. 25%.
- causal 3y ago
  Thanks for bringing that data. And yeah, half a million is a staggering number if true.
- qingcharles 3y ago
  And it completely depends on what you mean by innocent. A lot of cases are won by defendants, who after spending years in pretrial, find the prosecution did not have enough evidence to convict them. I've been witness to some far-out jury cases where the defendant was massively guilty but the jury acquitted for some reason. That's why I would often recommend a jury trial in a lot of cases simply because juries have such a high randomness attached to them.
  - annexrichmond 3y ago
    Hey hope you're doing well - have your charges have been fully dropped finally?
    - qingcharles 3y ago
      99% of them dropped two weeks ago. Working on the last one now. Will post more once it is all over. Thank you!
qingcharles 3y ago
OK, having spent practically 10 years inside and having helped 1000s of people with their cases, here's my single-person perspective: at least 95% of the people locked up are guilty of something related to their charges. The justice system isn't completely off-kilter. My main issues were that a) many people were overcharged (i.e. charged with extra crimes they were not guilty of) simply to obtain a plea deal; b) often police/prosecutor/judicial misconduct was used to get the defendant into the justice system and convict them; c) the sentences are often out-of-whack compared to the crime; d) jails and prisons generally offer very little value and rehabilitation.
- cool_dude85 3y ago
  1 out of 20 is still pretty nasty given the size of the US prison population.
  - csa 3y ago
    He said “at least”. And he specified “guilty of what they were charged with”. You also need to factor in the people who are guilty of crime A (that they did commit but were not convicted of) but are convicted of crime B (that they did not commit) for whatever reason. I’ve seen “street justice” like this. In some cases I think it a net good (right outcome for the wrong reasons, typically involving a serial criminal who manages to avoid the “smoking gun”), but sometimes it’s just an abuse of power that needs to be rectified.
    - qingcharles 3y ago
      A lot of people in that 5% take a plea for a crime they didn't commit because the plea is so sweet it saves them from trial on all of the charges, some of which they clearly did commit and might receive a higher sentence for than the plea deal. The overcharging is a trick by the prosecution to secure the plea. I see people charged with murder who plead to manslaughter when the case was manslaughter from the beginning, but who risks going to trial and being found guilty of murder? Minimum on murder is usually 20 years straight, whereas manslaughter is usually probationable.

by causal 3y ago

graphe 3y ago

Innocent meaning they didn’t do the specific crime, or innocent as in someone with a clean record that was railroaded? If you’re looking for the criminal that killed a bunch of people but not that specific case it’s not that uncommon. If you’re looking for a squeaky clean guy that was there at the wrong place at the wrong time it’s very rare. Most criminals are repeat offenders.

Zigurd 3y ago
Most businesses create and cultivate repeat customers from specific target markets. The US prison industrial complex is adept at this.
- graphe 3y ago
  What is the conclusion you’re making?
  - mistrial9 3y ago
    it is a revolving door in real ways
    - Zigurd 3y ago
      It starts with selective enforcement and repeated police contact with young people. That's how the business of imprisonment fills the funnel in the US.
klyrs 3y ago
This is magical thinking. We know the guy was bad so we locked him up for a crime. We don't know if we pinned the right crime on him or not, but he's locked away safely now so he must be bad. If this is your genuine belief, it begs the question: why are Americans, on average, such terrible people when compared to other first world citizens?
- graphe 3y ago
  You don’t just decide to lock someone up for a crime. Police gather evidence, give it to a prosecutor, the prosecutor makes a case (or not) and they will either go to trial or plea, then it’s in the hands of a jury or judge. Claiming guilt to plea down to avoid a case is a problem, but that isn’t the case you’re making. There’s nothing magical about criminal prosecution.
  - klyrs 3y ago
    > If you’re looking for the criminal that killed a bunch of people but not that specific case it’s not that uncommon. Here you're saying that mass-murderers are common, but despite their extensive trails of corpses, we can't pin the actual crime on an actual criminal. No, there's nothing magical about criminal prosecution here, it's no more than bullshit as you've described it. Back to my question, why do you think mass-murderers are so incredibly overrepresented in the American population?
    - graphe 3y ago
      Blame laws like fruit of the poisoned tree. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree If you want to act in bad faith and call it magic and bullshit feel free to grandstand.
      - qingcharles 3y ago
        What is wrong with the poisonous tree doctrine in your opinion? I find it isn't used widely enough against police and prosecutor misconduct. There are too many ways out of it for them.
s1artibartfast 3y ago
I believe, and I think the data supports, that the US prison population is due to the number of laws we have, and the harshness of our penalties. A false conviction rate of a few percent does not explain an order of magnitude level differences in incarceration between countries. I think an interesting question is what portion of the US population would be incarcerated if the totality of our laws were applied to everyone
- graphe 3y ago
  US law is applied unequally. It’s very harsh, sometimes random and I’ve heard all Americans break the law daily. We would all be in jail and sometimes prison. US crime is like driving across the only road that is covered in black ice with toll trolls on the way, you have to cross it, you know it’s there, and you can do it carefully but you never know what will happen or where you’ll slip up.
- qingcharles 3y ago
  Opinion of a criminal: I don't think there are too many criminal laws at the State level. That is definitely not the reason for high incarceration rates. The guys who are in prison didn't randomly trip over a law they didn't know existed. 99% of the laws are the same as they've been since pre-history: don't hurt someone, don't steal etc. Sentencing to prison is probably the key problem. Criminals need help. Outright punishment just hardens them. From my experience the bulk of crime has its origin in mental illnesses which are not being treated. The medical system in the USA almost certainly is the cause of this.
  - pdonis 3y ago
    What about non-violent drug possession? AFAIK that all by itself accounts for a significant number of incarcerated people. Laws criminalizing that are a product of the war on drugs, not embodying something in statute that's been a common law crime throughout human history.
    - s1artibartfast 3y ago
moate 3y ago
[flagged]
- graphe 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - moate 3y ago
    [flagged]
andrewla 3y ago
This is frequently cited by law enforcement and criminal justice officials, but this is an impossible bar to set, because they have not been convicted of those other unspecified crimes. The excuse "he maybe didn't rob this store, but he did rob those other stores, so let's nudge the case a bit", even if done in good faith by law enforcement, is still fishy, because ... why not convict them instead for the other crimes being purported, since we're more confident about them? In many cases I think this is likely to be a post facto rationalization for the fact that the case against the suspect is weaker than initially thought but represents a great deal of manpower that feels wasted if the suspect is not convicted.
- graphe 3y ago
  That definitely happens but lots of evidence is thrown out and they are looking at throwing the law at him. A famous case is Al Capone. I’m not calling it right or wrong, it’s just what happens with the system in place. It’s also shown to the public to convict them. The jury has the ability to ‘throw’ the case as they did in the case of OJ.
  - pc86 3y ago
    Except Al Capone actually did what he went to prison for. Yeah he did a lot of other stuff nobody could prove to the standard of a courtroom, but what you're talking about is someone "knows" Al Capone is bad, so they fabricate crimes and evidence and frame him for those in order to send him to prison. That would still be wrong. This is a feature, not a bug.
    - lesuorac 3y ago
      A feature to the prosector maybe but a bug to the public at large. 1) People do convince themselves of falsehoods; the person may not actually have done that initial crime. 2) Being able to trump up lessor charges can be (ab)used even if the person didn't commit an initial crime but instead is just a ~journalist~ nuisance.
    - denton-scratch 3y ago

Lord-Jobo 3y ago

This is an obviously tough subject to get precise data on, but dark figure analysis and innocence project data indicates that the CONVICTED innocent percentage is 1-3%, i have seen individual studies peak at 7% but those are outliers and not likely to be the real number. this seems really good until you realize its 20,000-140,000 people in prison right now. that are innocent. and it gets REALLY bleak when you look at the 400,000 people who are locked up at any given time, pretrial, in jail. who are legally innocent. The proportion of individuals held in jail pending trial increased from 56 percent of the jail population in 2000 to 66 percent in 2018 (https://www.brookings.edu/articles/a-better-path-forward-for-criminal-justice-reimagining-pretrial-and-sentencing/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/a-better-path-forward-for...) so, of the roughly 2 million people behind any bars at any given time, 400,000-500,000 are innocent. 25%.

causal 3y ago
Thanks for bringing that data. And yeah, half a million is a staggering number if true.
qingcharles 3y ago
And it completely depends on what you mean by innocent. A lot of cases are won by defendants, who after spending years in pretrial, find the prosecution did not have enough evidence to convict them. I've been witness to some far-out jury cases where the defendant was massively guilty but the jury acquitted for some reason. That's why I would often recommend a jury trial in a lot of cases simply because juries have such a high randomness attached to them.
- annexrichmond 3y ago
  Hey hope you're doing well - have your charges have been fully dropped finally?
  - qingcharles 3y ago
    99% of them dropped two weeks ago. Working on the last one now. Will post more once it is all over. Thank you!

qingcharles 3y ago

OK, having spent practically 10 years inside and having helped 1000s of people with their cases, here's my single-person perspective: at least 95% of the people locked up are guilty of something related to their charges. The justice system isn't completely off-kilter. My main issues were that a) many people were overcharged (i.e. charged with extra crimes they were not guilty of) simply to obtain a plea deal; b) often police/prosecutor/judicial misconduct was used to get the defendant into the justice system and convict them; c) the sentences are often out-of-whack compared to the crime; d) jails and prisons generally offer very little value and rehabilitation.

cool_dude85 3y ago
1 out of 20 is still pretty nasty given the size of the US prison population.
- csa 3y ago
  He said “at least”. And he specified “guilty of what they were charged with”. You also need to factor in the people who are guilty of crime A (that they did commit but were not convicted of) but are convicted of crime B (that they did not commit) for whatever reason. I’ve seen “street justice” like this. In some cases I think it a net good (right outcome for the wrong reasons, typically involving a serial criminal who manages to avoid the “smoking gun”), but sometimes it’s just an abuse of power that needs to be rectified.
  - qingcharles 3y ago
    A lot of people in that 5% take a plea for a crime they didn't commit because the plea is so sweet it saves them from trial on all of the charges, some of which they clearly did commit and might receive a higher sentence for than the plea deal. The overcharging is a trick by the prosecution to secure the plea. I see people charged with murder who plead to manslaughter when the case was manslaughter from the beginning, but who risks going to trial and being found guilty of murder? Minimum on murder is usually 20 years straight, whereas manslaughter is usually probationable.