21 ms·

America’s incarceration rate is in decline

271 points by paulpauper 1y ago

gjdoslhx 1y ago
https://archive.is/pe7eH https://archive.is/pe7eH
pengaru 1y ago
Does that mean we can stop keeping mouth wash and deodorant behind lock and key on store shelves and resume locking up the criminals making messes of our cities?
- 762236 1y ago
  [flagged]
- outside1234 1y ago
  This turned out to not actually be a thing: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/business/organized-shoplifting-retail-crime-theft-retraction.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/business/organized-shopli...
  - arduanika 1y ago
    pengaru did not say anything about organized shoplifting. The lock and key were definitely a thing, and still are. Please read comments before responding to them.
  - pengaru 1y ago
    Come visit SF and let's go shopping downtown.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
  It's unclear if the decline in prisoners stems from a decline in crime. While I generally believe the statistics that violent crime has decreased, it may be the case that the judicial system and even the government in general just have no enthusiasm for prosecuting or punishing it. In short, no, they won't stop locking it up. They wouldn't even if there was a decline in petty crime... those locks are so that they can staff the store with 2 people instead of 5.
  - pengaru 1y ago
    > those locks are so that they can staff the store with 2 people instead of 5. Maybe in some cases that's true, but it's definitely not true for the few big box stores I frequent in SF where this practice occurs. The Target on 4th street has significantly more staff running around constantly unlocking things and tending to this sort of b.s. than they would otherwise. I'm not sure who pays for the tactical gear wearing security guards at the entrance looking ready for Iraq, but it can't be cheap.
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
      > The Target on 4th street has significantly more staff running around constantly unlocking things and tending to this sort of b.s. than they would otherwise. Are you certain, or were they running 3 people ragged who will burn out in a month and quit? Constant motion can make it seem like there are more people, but I also remember the 1990s and seeing at least one person per department in a Kmart, some just monitoring their area. A bigbox store like Target would've had 2 people for the cash registers up front, at least one in customer service, and one per department during off-peak hours. If you're telling me you're seeing a dozen people for certain, I'll believe you, but I am wondering if it wasn't actually fewer. And besides all that, I was thinking more along the lines of CVS and Walgreens, which are the stores I know of locking everything behind glass.
  - antonymoose 1y ago
    I live in a deep Red Bible thumping, back the blue, law and order county / state. About 7 years ago a former schoolmate of mine shot a man 6 times over a bad drug deal, fled the state to California. He was captured by the US Marshal and brought back to the county jail where he bonded out after 3 month. After his bonding out, he drove over to the victim’s parent’s house and performed a drive-by shooting, injuring none but did kill livestock. He was arrested again, taken to the county jail, and bonded out after several months. The issue finally reached a plea bargain, they dropped all charges related to both shooting, had him plead guilty to felony firearms charge, and gave him time served and 5 years probation. This man is a grown adult with felony priors, and got a proverbial slap on the wrist. Never saw a day of state prison, likely never will. If this is how we treat serious violent crime, I’m not surprised in TFA at all.
- energywut 1y ago
  Putting poor, desperate people in jail isn't going to solve the systemic issues that create poor, desperate people. Locking up people for petty theft is almost certainly FAR more expensive than the cost of the materials being stolen. It costs tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars to house an inmate every year, to say nothing of the damage it causes that inmate. Prisons make criminals more likely to commit crime in the future. A person would have to be stealing like 40 bottles of mouthwash every single day for it to be cheaper to jail an inmate rather than just replace the mouthwash for the business. Cases like that also clog the justice system and prevent solving more serious crimes, deplete shared resources like police and public defenders, and overcrowd prisons. Even if you aren't a prison abolitionist like me, surely the rational approach here isn't "Pay more and increase the likelyhood the petty criminal becomes a serious criminal". It just makes zero rational sense to try and solve the issue that way.
  - 3eb7988a1663 1y ago
    This article claims that the inmate costs per state range from $23k/year (Arkansas) to $307k/year (Massachusetts). https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cost-per-prisoner-in-us-states/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cost-per-prisoner-in-us-sta...
  - BeFlatXIII 1y ago
    > Locking up people for petty theft is almost certainly FAR more expensive than the cost of the materials being stolen Who pays matters.
    - energywut 1y ago
      We pay. We pay to house inmates. It costs us a TON of money to house prison populations.
  - rahimnathwani 1y ago
    Prisons make criminals more likely to commit crime in the future. Prisons make people less likely to become criminals. Your comment focuses on prison and the impact it has on a single criminal who is caught, convicted, and put in prison. Sometimes this is a useful way to look at things. I think it's far more useful to consider prison's impact on all the people who are not in prison. It serves as a crime deterrent.
- qingcharles 1y ago
  Depends on the area. The area I lived in last year, it was rare to enter a Walgreens that wasn't actively being pillaged by shoplifters. I remember when they announced they were closing the only local Wal-mart (due to excessive shoplifting, allegedly) -- that same day the shoplifters went in like a swarm of locusts and stripped it bare. They had police at both exits, but they were powerless.
mauvehaus 1y ago
From the end of World War II until the mid-1970s, the proportion of Americans in prison each year never exceeded 120 per 100,000 That's a funny way of saying 0.12%. Is there a reason for this? It sure doesn't make it easy to compare the numbers they're giving with other numbers given as percentages. I guess if you're considering a sufficiently small population you could go from ~600,000 people in Vermont * 120/100,000 -> ~720 imprisoned people in Vermont trivially, but we're the second smallest state. This certainly doesn't scale to cities over a million. At least I'd start having to think harder about it.
- WorkerBee28474 1y ago
  > 120 per 100,000 ... Is there a reason for this? Crime statistics (e.g. homicides) are often quoted as 'n per 100,000 population'. It's probably also easier for mental math, e.g. here's a city with 1 million population, that's 10 100Ks, so 1200 people in prison.
  - InitialLastName 1y ago
    It also lets you abstract away or compare to stats that are scaled to population but might not be 1:1 with a person, e.g. "thefts per 100,000 population per year" where one person might either commit or be the victim of multiple thefts in a year.
- everforward 1y ago
  120 per 100,000 includes significant digits. 0.12% could be anywhere from 120-124 per 100,000. You'd really want 0.120%, but that's confusing for different reasons. Worse would be 1,000 per 100,000, which is 1% but there's no way to tell that it's not rounded or truncated.
  - ninthcat 1y ago
    "120" and "0.12%" both have 2 significant digits. "120." and "0.120%" have 3 significant digits.
outside1234 1y ago
Crime is also way down over the last 20 years: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/24/what-the-data-says-about-crime-in-the-us/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/24/what-the-...
- FrustratedMonky 1y ago
  Because of those tough on crime republicans. Lets see if cutting education has any impact over the next 20 years.
  - jandrewrogers 1y ago
    Crime reduction is strongly correlated with an aging population. Crime is largely a young man's game.
    - FrustratedMonky 1y ago
      Young and hungry, without opportunity. Also something being cut with reduced food aid and education.
      - electriclove 1y ago
        Education? Free Food Aid? In the US, people are not starving
        FrustratedMonky 1y ago
        Just because a lot of people are fat, doesn't mean it is evenly distributed. That is just a right talking point about how we are so spoiled. Plenty of kids need food. Kids learn better when not hungry. And Republicans are cutting school food programs.
        mrguyorama 1y ago
        13% of American households experienced food insecurity in 2023, which means "these households were uncertain of having or unable to acquire enough food to meet the needs of all their members because they had insufficient money or other resources for food." 5% (6.8 million households) experienced "very low food security" which is "normal eating patterns of one or more household members were disrupted and food intake was reduced at times during the year because they had insufficient money or other resources for food" American food security is so bad in plenty of places that we can still get notable increases in academic performance just by giving people food Lack of access to food is literally holding the US back.
amelius 1y ago
[flagged]
GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
this is great news. but... i fear the new avenues of business sought by companies that operate for-profit prisons - i don't expect they'll just eat the losses of declining populations in their main moneymakers, and we're already starting to see them work on detention facilities for DHS etc.
- throwaway48476 1y ago
  Detention facilities for deportations is an inherently fast shrinking population.
  - GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
    at some point, maybe. i have no trust in DHS whatsoever.
    - pessimizer 1y ago
      But do you think they'd start letting more people into the country, just to charge to detain and deport them? It's actually sort of an ideal solution. Big business gets back labor that it can threaten to deport if it demands anything, then they can clean up on the public-private deportations. Factory managers could send ICE a list of their most annoying employees to visit. It would be so 80's, I almost typed "the INS."
      - GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
        what you're describing is more or less already happening. don't think h1b visaholders won't become a target.
        throwaway48476 1y ago
        You think if an H1B is canceled that they would illegally overstay?
- FireBeyond 1y ago
strict9 1y ago
>Rapidly declining numbers of youth are committing crimes, getting arrested, and being incarcerated. This matters because young offenders are the raw material that feeds the prison system: As one generation ages out, another takes its place on the same horrid journey. Another factor which will soon impact this, if it isn't already, is the rapidly changing nature of youth. Fertility rates have been dropping since 2009 or so. Average age of parents is increasing. Teen pregnancy on a long and rapid decline. All of these working together means that each year the act of having a child is much more deliberate and the parents likely having more resources. Which in turn should mean fewer youth delinquency, which as the article notes is how most in prison started out.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- bluGill 1y ago
  > the act of having a child is much more deliberate and the parents likely having more resources This is both good and bad. Having a child is very difficult, but it gets harder as you get older. You lack a lot of monitory resources as a teen or the early 20s, but you have a lot more energy, as you get older your body starts decaying you will lack energy. A kid had at 40 will still be depending on your when you are 55 (kids is only 15), and if the kids goes to college may have some dependency on you when your peers are retiring. Plus if your kids have kids young as well as you, you be around and have some energy for grandkids. Don't read the above as advocating having kids too young, it is not. However don't wait until you think it is the perfect time. If you are 25 you should be seriously thinking in the next 2 years, and by 30 have them (if of course kids are right for you - that is a complex consideration I'm not going to get into). Do not let fear of how much it will cost or desire for more resources first stop you from having kids when you are still young enough to do well.
  - c22 1y ago
    I had kids in my late 30s and they tested my patience and emotional regulation to an extent greater than any other experience of my life. I was somewhat emotionally volatile in my 20s and I can't imagine my kids having better outcomes if I'd had to learn to parent at that time in my life.
kovek 1y ago
This is interesting. I don't know why it's happening. However, this book deserves a mention: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Natur... . It shares statistics on how violence has been decreasing throughout the history of humanity.
- reverendsteveii 1y ago
  as a followup to that (excellent) book, here's Barry Glassner - A Culture of Fear. The Better Angels of Our Nature talks about how violence has always been declining. A Culture of Fear talks about how the rate of that decline has been increasing since the 90s but people actually perceive things as becoming more dangerous rather than less, and attempts to come up with an answer as to why that may be the case.
  - SAI_Peregrinus 1y ago
    The most obvious answer is large-scale media. I can learn about a shooting on the other side of the country within hours of it happening, and think "that could happen where I am". Likewise with any other news, which by definition is about out-of-the-ordinary events. There's more news about violence because there's more news, not because there's more violence, but it feels like there's more violence.
    - spogbiper 1y ago
      "if it bleeds, it leads" is (or was, i'm old) a common saying regarding the news media. It may be that there is more news that scares us because scaring us is profitable
    - reverendsteveii 1y ago
      Piling onto this, humans have both recency and frequency biases that, combined with the attention-as-currency news industry, tend to lead to an increase in the perceived danger of violent crime that's entirely disconnected from the actual statistical danger of violent crime. You hear about more crimes, you hear about each crime more often, and your estimate of how much crime there actually is increases.
rawgabbit 1y ago
This is good news. The level of crime and number of offenders has decreased. Quotes from the article: > As of 2016—the most recent year for which data are available—the average man in state prison had been arrested nine times, was currently incarcerated for his sixth time, and was serving a 16-year sentence. > But starting in the late 1960s, a multidecade crime wave swelled in America, and an unprecedented number of adolescents and young adults were criminally active. In response, the anti-crime policies of most local, state, and federal governments became more and more draconian. > Rapidly declining numbers of youth are committing crimes, getting arrested, and being incarcerated.
- WalterBright 1y ago
  > Rapidly declining numbers of youth May be the result of a rapidly declining birth rate.
- bilbo0s 1y ago
  Rapidly declining numbers of youth are committing crimes, getting arrested, and being incarcerated Well also, the number one crime these youths were getting arrested for was drug possession. With drug trafficking being second. 15 years ago the vast majority of people in prison in texas were there for drug possession or trafficking. If all of a sudden everyone's drug of choice is marijuana, and it's being decriminalized everywhere, I have to think that makes it hard to get the numbers you used to get in terms of arrests. Not that this is a bad thing. I'm just pointing out that while arrests did go down, I don't necessarily believe that the prevalence of pot smoking decreased. One benefit is that this new environment should help them to have better futures than the youths that came before them.
- TrainedMonkey 1y ago
  Like all complex phenomena 1960s crime wave probably has many causes, but lead poisoning stands out - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis
  - ivape 1y ago
rwmj 1y ago
The question not even asked by the article is ... why?
- ToucanLoucan 1y ago
  The answer is likely unknowable, but I can think of several factors that tie into the plummeting birth rate: - While the Freakanomics citation of widespread access to abortion has been debunked as a sole cause, I think it remains credible for at least a contributing factor. Fewer young people born to folks who are too poor/busy/not wanting to raise them is doubtlessly going to reduce the number of young offenders who become the prison system's regular customers their whole lives. - Beyond just abortion, contraceptives and contraceptive education have gotten much more accessible. For all the endless whining from the right about putting condoms on cucumbers poisoning children's minds with vegetable-based erotica, as it turns out, teens have sex, as they probably have since time immemorial, and if you teach them how to do it safely and don't threaten their safety if they do, they generally will do it safely. - Additionally, there has been a gradual ramp-up in how badly negative outcomes stack in life, and "messing up" on your path to adulthood carries higher costs than it ever has. Possibly contradicting myself, teens are having less sex than ever, as all broad forms of socializing have decreased apart from social media, which is exploding but doesn't really present opportunities to bone down. Add to it, young people are more monitored than they've ever been. When I was coming up, I had hours alone to myself to do whatever I wanted, largely wherever I wanted as long as I could get there and my parents knew (though they couldn't verify where I was). Now we have a variety of apps for digitally stalking your kids, and that's not even going into the mess of extracurricular activities, after school events, classes, study sessions, sports, etc. that modern kids get. They barely have any unmonitored time anymore. - Another point: alternative sexuality (or the lack thereof) is more accepted than it's ever been by mainstream society, and anything that isn't man + woman is virtually guaranteed to not create unwanted pregnancy unless something truly interesting happens. - Lastly, I would cite that even if you have a heterosexual couple who is interested in having kids, that's harder than ever. A ton of folks my age can't even afford a home, let alone one suitable for starting a family. The ones that do start families live either in or uncomfortably close to poverty, and usually in one or another variety of insecurity. The ones that can afford it often choose not to for... I mean there's so many reasons bringing kids into the world right now feels unappealing. It's a ton of work that's saddled onto 2 people in a categorically a-historic way, in an economy where two full time salaries is basically mandatory if you want to have a halfway decent standard of living, and double that for one that includes children. That's not even going into the broader state of the world, how awful the dating market is especially for women, so many reasons and factors. Any stressed animal population stops reproduction first. I don't see why we'd think people would be any different.
casenmgreen 1y ago
Freakonomics argued that crime correlates to whether or not abortion is available. If it is not, crime rates are up, and by a lot. If it is, crime rates are down. When you flip from one to the other, takes about 15/20 years for the effect to show up. Rationale is that forcing parents to have their kids when they're not ready for them significantly increases delinquency in young adults. This is apparently the only possible theory at the moment. It's not proven, of course, but the other theories which were given have been found lacking. This is the only theory which has some evidence, and hasn't been found to be wrong.
- mystified5016 1y ago
  I'd wager that the foster system is a huge factor. Poverty is likely the rest. When you don't give a human resources, they will find a way to take it. When you force humans with no resources to have kids, well...
- gosub100 1y ago
  Why abortion and not contraceptives?
  - wil421 1y ago
    They probably aren’t using them.
  - iknowstuff 1y ago
    Why not both
    - gosub100 1y ago
      one can be prevented by the other
      - bdangubic 1y ago
        not prevented… (trust me :)) but best we can do!!
deadbabe 1y ago
There are many reasons why crime is in decline, but ultimately its economic. Crime used to pay. Your expected return on a crime was pretty good for the risk involved. Nowadays though, because of technology, risk has increased while the returns have also decreased. Barriers to entry for crimes worth committing are now way higher. Robbing a gas station decades ago could yield a nice chunk of cash that could probably pay bills for a month. But now with less people using cash and cost of living increasing, there’s no point. Most registers have pitiful amount of cash. And mugging strangers on the street is likely even worse. No one carries wads of cash anymore. The hot industry to be in is ransomware. The sums are vast and the risk is low if you do it right. But it’s very white collar, it requires skills that your typical low level criminal won’t have. Overall, it means there’s a lot of crimes that are done not for any financial reason, just for personal satisfaction.
- permo-w 1y ago
  not forgetting that CCTV is absolutely ubiquitous and high def, where previously it was reasonably rare and low quality
  - deadbabe 1y ago
    And most young people would rather have social media that lets them easily be tracked than staying anonymous for the purposes of committing crimes.
    - lupusreal 1y ago
      Even if you leave your phone at home to create an alibi for yourself, it is very likely that CCTVs will see you enroute to the crime scene, if not at the crime scene itself. Between businesses with cameras, front door cameras on houses, and traffic cameras, it's very difficult to travel anywhere without leaving a trace that investigators can pick up after the fact if they're sufficiently motivated.
      - BLKNSLVR 1y ago
holmesworcester 1y ago
How much of this is due to smartphones? The years seem to line up. 2014 seemed like the big year where smartphone ubiquity changed US teen culture. Less boredom, dumb adventure, drinking, etc. (For better or worse but in this case better.)
- y-curious 1y ago
  Devils advocate: smartphones have made antisocial tiktok trends, "fast money" hacks and paint an unrealistic portrait of success. Before, only rappers could be young and rich and flashy. Now, seemingly regular teens are millionaires and this is constantly fed into young people's feeds.
  - janalsncm 1y ago
    That might be true but it’s another topic. If your point is that the benefits of crime reduction due to smartphones are outweighed by harms to mental health, then I think most people would disagree. But this is also probably painting far too rosy a picture of what Meta is doing.
  - makeitdouble 1y ago
    I hear your point as: up until then scams, gambling and Ponzi schemes were for adults with strong purchasing power (could sink all the family's money in one single decision), when with smartphones everyone gets to enjoy screwing themselves directly. My hot take is that previous generations weren't better prepared for the adult world than today's kids. They were more "mature" (sex, violence, abuse resistance) in some respects, but not specially ready for caring about society.
- deeg 1y ago
  Or maybe video games. Lots of teen boys staying at home playing Xbox instead of getting into trouble.
  - mixmastamyk 1y ago
    I blazed that trail in the 80s.
kiernanmcgowan 1y ago
> After peaking at just more than 1.6 million Americans in 2009 > But a prison is a portrait of what happened five, 10, and 20 years ago. Is this just a result of the dropping crime rates since the mid 90s, but on a 20ish year lag?
- Jtsummers 1y ago
  That's what the article goes on to describe, yes. Declining crime rates mean fewer new prisoners, but high recidivism rates plus long sentences means many old prisoners are still in prison. As those old prisoners die off or for whatever reason don't commit more crimes after release, the total population declines.
- standardUser 1y ago
  Mandatory minimum sentences can be 10, 15 or 20 years depending on the quantity of drug and other factors. Often just for possession. The US spent several decades filling our prisons with people using those sentences, and we still do, just not as aggressively.
oceansky 1y ago
Bad news for prison owners
egypturnash 1y ago
GOOD
kazinator 1y ago
In part due to simple demographics? If most prisoners are younger, starting their incarceration incidents in their teens or twenties, then basically the fewer young people you have, the less people in prison: https://populationeducation.org/u-s-population-pyramids-over-time/ https://populationeducation.org/u-s-population-pyramids-over... Compare 1960 to 2020.
standardUser 1y ago
They fail to mention the reason the prison population soared in the 70's and 80's, because of ultra-harsh prison sentencing for drugs. In retrospect, those laws appear to have been deliberately designed to create a massive and permanent prison population, far beyond what locking people up only for non-consensual crimes could ever sustain. Now, most of those laws have been rolled back. In the past 10-15 years the number of people locked up at the state level for drug crimes is down 30% even though drug arrests remain high. And those still getting locked up are getting shorter sentences. (though over 40% of inmates at the federal level are still there for drugs) I'm not sure why they failed to mention such a key issues related to incarceration. They repeatedly refer to the surge in crime in the drug war era as a "crime wave". And they link to 3 other pro-drug war articles by the same author. Maybe Keith Humphreys had a bad trip in his youth and now he's making it everyone's problem.
viktorcode 1y ago
In the light of that dynamic I fund it curious that Russian prisons population is rapidly declining too, but for very different reason.
- low_tech_love 1y ago
  You might be half joking, but your hypothesis is interesting to show how many different reasons can exist for the same phenomenon. Lots of people here talking about lead, for whatever reason, but also decriminalisation of drugs, abortion, etc. Most are logical explanations, even if contradictory. Very nice to see how we need to be super aware of statistics; we can force the numbers to say anything we want.
  - ivanjermakov 1y ago
    This is an amazing domain for correlation vs causation, because a lot of hypotheses make sense.
bomba_tom 1y ago
[flagged]
- msgodel 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - analognoise 1y ago
    Sorry, is this sarcasm? That's a frequent racist dog-whistle to justify systemically unjust (read: racist) policing; I'm surprised to see it on HN.
    - bdangubic 1y ago
      you shouldn’t be :)
    - keybored 1y ago
      Everything bad is due to lack of intelligence and everything good is caused by intelligence. Average day on the HN.
      - analognoise 1y ago
        The irony is that seeing things that way implies a massive lack of intelligence.
        keybored 1y ago
        Intelligent people can have a too narrow lens of the world too. Like when sociological issues becomes all about culture and intelligence.
1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago
The Atlantic suggests this results from the release of those convicted during a decades long crime wave, which apprently took place when many of us grew up. Perhaps it also tracks with a progressive decline in law enforcement. Whether that is because crime waves not longer exist or whether it is some other reason is a question for the reader. A substanbtial amount of crime is now done via internet. Few are ever convicted.
- saulpw 1y ago
  Marijuana possession was the number one crime and is now legal in a majority of states. This seems like the high-order bit.
  - 0xbadcafebee 1y ago
    ^ This. The drug war was an attempt for conservatives to punish poor people for using a harmless drug (marijuana) to help cope with systemic inequality, and kids for wanting to have fun. From 1950-1970, America introduced new mandatory minimums for possession of marijuana. First-time offenses carried a minimum of 2-10 yrs in prison and a fine of up to $20,000. They repealed these minimums in 1970 because it did jack shit to stop people smoking. The govt even recommended decriminalizing marijuana in 1970, but Nixon rejected it. But then came The Parents. As fucking usual, parents "concerned for their children" began a years-long lobbying and marketing effort to convince the public any kind of drug was evil and harming kids. Through the 1980s their lobbying spread to all corners of the government, influencing messaging and policy. So finally in 1986, Reagan introduced new mandatory minimums for marijuana, based on amount. Having 100 marijuana plants was the same crime as 100 grams of heroin. And then they went further; if you we caught with marijuana three times, you got a life sentence. Life. For pot. In 1989, Bush Sr. officially declared the "new" War on Drugs. And we've all been paying for it ever since.
    - anonzzzies 1y ago
      It is not a harmless drug though. Less harmless than most others, but not harmless.
kieranmaine 1y ago
One more thing to throw into the mix. The treatment of ADHD might be helping: "ADHD medication still reduces risks, but benefits have weakened over time" https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2835661 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/...
- vharuck 1y ago
  I once asked myself, "What did people with ADHD as severe as mine do before there was medication?" The obvious answer was: drugs. People like me used to do a lot of drugs.
  - eikenberry 1y ago
    I think taking available stimulants, like nicotine and caffeine, were also ways of coping as they generally help with ADHD focus (or the lack thereof). I know anecdotally that I really hit my academic stride in college when I took up both habits. I still notice a small difference after coffee (gave up smoking a long time back).
mensetmanusman 1y ago
The best stat is that nearly 90% of prisoners had absent fathers.
knowitnone 1y ago
only because the US is soft on crime - so soft that drugs that were illegal are no longer illegal
ilitirit 1y ago
I'd like to see stats on how many people are getting arrested for petty crimes e.g. marijuana (which isn't even a crime in some contexts any more) back then vs now.
snickerdoodle12 1y ago
Does this include those sent to the gulag in El Salvador?
plantwallshoe 1y ago
Is it possible that incarceration had the intended effect? Did an entire generation grow up seeing their fathers and uncles locked up and decide that there must be a better way?
- boston_clone 1y ago
  there is no research to support the notion that mass incarceration leads to a reduction in crime; full stop.
  - wskinner 1y ago
    The scholarly debate is over how large and how lasting the effect is, not whether any evidence exists.
    - boston_clone 1y ago
      Is it not that studies show how mass incarceration increases likelihood of children to be offenders, not make them less likely to do so? e.g., an incarcerated parent before the age of 12 increases the chances of being in jail after 18 by 230% I genuinely don’t recall anything to support the idea that incarceration decreases crime, in general, at all…
- khasan222 1y ago
  I would argue that not having a male role model in your life is way worse than seeing the consequences enacted on another. This even if their was a gain from watching others suffer, the lack of discipline, guidance, sternness, is way more detrimental than the positives of fearing the consequences
- qingcharles 1y ago
  Absolutely not at all. I have a lot of experience with the justice system and I can tell you that incarceration has almost no positive benefits for those that are redeemable. And for those who cannot function in the real world (i.e. serious untreatable mental problems resulting in constant criminality) we need to find a softer way to keep them separated from being able to harm the public.
b3ing 1y ago
Crime has been going down since the 90s, video games and online porn probably helped this
m3kw9 1y ago
When they decide change the threshold for arrests, like the SF robberies or under some dollar amount.
anovikov 1y ago
Problem isn't with people who are in prison. Problem is with people who are out of prison with prison experience - most of them are thoroughly criminalised for life. So one should count people who served serious time behind bars, and now out - ideally, age-corrected, because people age out of crime and someone who got in jail at 18 and left at 50 is probably ok and isn't a big danger. That is the metric that society should strive to minimise.
- qingcharles 1y ago
  It's essentially that once you leave prison you have zero resources, usually all your friends are gone, often your family shuns you, you can't get a job due to your record and lack of skills, you can't rent any accommodation due to background checks, and you are on a knife-edge parole that will send you back for any tiny infraction. And it's easy for someone to just give in and go back to prison. Prison is only scary the first time. After that you walk back in and meet people you know who don't judge you. You know the staff. You know the routines. Do a few more years for the parole violation and see if things have changed next time around. If not, repeat ad infinitum.
zombot 1y ago
Prison is big business in the U.S., so I fully expect red alerts going off and panic attacks sweeping the country.
- wetpaws 1y ago
  [dead]
philipallstar 1y ago
Incarceration isn't the same thing as crime. If the most populous state by far (California, almost 40m people in 2025) passes a law[0] that stealing things under $950 is a misdemeanor rather than a felony, then crime can continue while incarceration rates drop. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_California_Proposition_47 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_California_Proposition_47
- pyuser583 1y ago
  It’s very hard to record crime rates in prisons. Incarcerating people likely to commit crimes will mean their future crimes are much less likely to be reported. This does not mean less crime, it means crime just isn’t being recorded. Even the most rigorous studies account for crimes committed in prisons.
- snarf21 1y ago
  This is a very one sided presentation of the facts. This fact is generally used to suggest that theft is all a liberal blue state issue. The highest felony theft amount in the US is in red Texas and is $2500. Around 40 states have a *HIGHER* felony $ limit for theft than California. If you think about it, it makes a lot of sense to not spend $10K+ to jail someone for stealing $500 of stuff. There are more cost effective ways to rehabilitate people. However, our society doesn't prioritize helping as much as punishing.
  - potato3732842 1y ago
    The whole hoopla around the felony status is just a proxy. when you commit a bunch of felonies there's all sorts of coded in law and process (sentencing guidelines) that apply (as well as KPIs, cops and prosecutors care about being able to say they put felons away) so you can't really be habitually felonious very much without winding up behind bars. Below the felony threshold the system is far more free to let you go back out and keep doing what you're doing. So the actual dollar threshold of felony theft is really just a crappy (because not all states go equally hard on non-felony crime) proxy for the rate of recidivism.
  - almosthere 1y ago
kevin_thibedeau 1y ago
We may see a boom in crime as functional illiteracy rates climb, which is already correlated with criminal behavior. A generation that is weaned on having a computer do everything by voice command and gaining passive knowledge exclusively through videos will have more living on the margins who can't function well in a society that needs some base level of competence in understanding and interpreting text.
cooper_ganglia 1y ago
[flagged]
- inglor_cz 1y ago
  I don't believe that, at least not in the whole nation (certain cities may be an exception). US cities used to be a lot more violent three decades ago. Fudging manslaughters statistics is not easy. I suspect the reason is the same as with everything else - kids glued to screens don't have time or even stamina for gang activity, all their attention being consumed by a highly addictive product at hand.
- whoknowsidont 1y ago
  Do you have any clear examples of this that demonstrate the consistency of the pattern you're describing?
  - cooper_ganglia 1y ago
    Sure, a quick search unfortunately gives you result after result! https://www.wsmv.com/2025/06/23/family-woman-murdered-nashville-files-150m-suit-against-bonding-companies/ https://www.wsmv.com/2025/06/23/family-woman-murdered-nashvi... https://nypost.com/2025/02/28/us-news/career-criminal-free-without-bail-charged-in-fatal-nyc-shooting-while-still-wearing-court-ordered-ankle-monitor/ https://nypost.com/2025/02/28/us-news/career-criminal-free-w... https://www.fox26houston.com/news/the-judge-did-her-job-defense-responds-criticism-over-release-suspect-deputy-killing https://www.fox26houston.com/news/the-judge-did-her-job-defe... https://nypost.com/2025/02/22/us-news/nyc-career-criminal-tyriek-martin-handed-bail-by-manhattan-judge-after-attempted-rape-on-subway/ https://nypost.com/2025/02/22/us-news/nyc-career-criminal-ty... https://nypost.com/2025/06/21/us-news/plucky-nyc-victim-94-vows-to-stand-her-ground-after-assault/ https://nypost.com/2025/06/21/us-news/plucky-nyc-victim-94-v... https://www.fox5ny.com/news/nyc-judges-violent-perps-report https://www.fox5ny.com/news/nyc-judges-violent-perps-report https://nypost.com/2025/03/22/us-news/meet-wanda-licitra-nycs-worst-pro-defendant-judge-sources/ https://nypost.com/2025/03/22/us-news/meet-wanda-licitra-nyc... https://nypost.com/2025/04/24/us-news/hooligan-whose-alleged-gunfight-led-to-death-of-harlem-community-pillar-momma-zee-was-out-on-bail-in-slashing-case/ https://nypost.com/2025/04/24/us-news/hooligan-whose-alleged... https://nypost.com/2025/06/25/us-news/serial-perv-who-tried-kissing-nyc-subway-riders-feet-cut-loose-with-no-bail-then-has-twisted-outburst-your-mother-has-a-foot-fetish/ https://nypost.com/2025/06/25/us-news/serial-perv-who-tried-... https://nypost.com/2025/01/07/us-news/nyc-sees-staggering-146-5-spike-in-felony-assaults-by-repeat-offenders-as-top-cops-broken-system-that-keeps-putting-criminals-back-on-street/ https://nypost.com/2025/01/07/us-news/nyc-sees-staggering-14... https://nypost.com/2025/03/07/us-news/maniac-busted-for-slugging-pregnant-woman-37-on-nyc-subway-fourth-random-attack-on-female-straphangers-in-as-many-months-sources/ https://nypost.com/2025/03/07/us-news/maniac-busted-for-slug... https://nypost.com/2024/08/11/us-news/brute-charged-in-attack-on-mta-workers-freed-after-cutting-deal-only-to-go-on-slashing-spree/ https://nypost.com/2024/08/11/us-news/brute-charged-in-attac... https://www.foxnews.com/us/blue-states-bail-laws-panned-police-chief-violent-suspects-repeatedly-cut-loose https://www.foxnews.com/us/blue-states-bail-laws-panned-poli...
charlescearl 1y ago
The Black southeast is still in over the Soviet Union’s rates during the 1930s https://www.prisonpolicy.org/profiles/LA.html https://www.prisonpolicy.org/profiles/LA.html. Racialized carceral warfare.
shadowtree 1y ago
While my Target puts Legos behind plexiglas. While my Safeway puts deodorant behind plexiglas. Statistics are amazing. Even crime stats are "down". Don't report, don't convict - done.
- photochemsyn 1y ago
  This points more towards organized crime rings targeting stores, taking large amounts of the same popular items, then reselling them on eBay or Amazon. If you have a smallish number of people doing a largish number of crimes, this won't be reflected in incarceration statistics (particularly if the resellers rarely get caught).
  - chaps 1y ago
    "This points more towards" -- you have any source towards this? :)
    - dfxm12 1y ago
      Why selectively put this onus on the person you've responded to and not the person at the top of this thread?
      - chaps 1y ago
        Um. The same could be said to you? I don't see what your point is.
    - germinalphrase 1y ago
      I know that in recent years Target has announced that they were investigating, in partnership with local and federal law enforcement, organized theft rings. It was publicly reported on here in Minneapolis.
      - chaps 1y ago
        Many, many of those claims were found to be significantly exaggerated. It bothers me immensely that people still talk about this nonsense. https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-12-14/column-retail-lobby-confesses-it-lied-about-organized-shoplifting-rings https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-12-14/column-ret...
almosthere 1y ago
After covid they changed who will go to jail for what because they decided overcrowding with covid was killing inmates. I think it was the right thing to do at the time. However since 2021ish crime has been skyrocketing. It's definitely time to figure out the next steps. I want to live in a peaceful, safe society. It makes sense to separate those that can't help but destroy the peace. It has also been stated that something like 90% of crime is performed by a very small percentage of people and most of it is just the same person over and over and over. Those people must be separated from society.
black_13 1y ago
[dead]
fredfish 1y ago
An interesting and upbeat article.. But the death rate from overdose went from 9 to 32 per 100000 in the last 2 decades. Using their entrance logic, if I understand what this means afa per annum, couldn't that amount to a few hundred per 100000 who are not cycling into long prison terms because they are dead? There's been something like 900k excess deaths since 1968 compared to if the rate was just flat since then. That's a lot of people who probably had a much higher chance of incarceration than average even if you only consider drug law and the more recently someone was born the more likely they are to have already overdosed at any given age.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

271 points by paulpauper 1y ago

https://archive.is/pe7eH https://archive.is/pe7eH

Does that mean we can stop keeping mouth wash and deodorant behind lock and key on store shelves and resume locking up the criminals making messes of our cities?

762236 1y ago
[flagged]
outside1234 1y ago
This turned out to not actually be a thing: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/business/organized-shoplifting-retail-crime-theft-retraction.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/business/organized-shopli...
- arduanika 1y ago
  pengaru did not say anything about organized shoplifting. The lock and key were definitely a thing, and still are. Please read comments before responding to them.
- pengaru 1y ago
  Come visit SF and let's go shopping downtown.
NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
It's unclear if the decline in prisoners stems from a decline in crime. While I generally believe the statistics that violent crime has decreased, it may be the case that the judicial system and even the government in general just have no enthusiasm for prosecuting or punishing it. In short, no, they won't stop locking it up. They wouldn't even if there was a decline in petty crime... those locks are so that they can staff the store with 2 people instead of 5.
- pengaru 1y ago
  > those locks are so that they can staff the store with 2 people instead of 5. Maybe in some cases that's true, but it's definitely not true for the few big box stores I frequent in SF where this practice occurs. The Target on 4th street has significantly more staff running around constantly unlocking things and tending to this sort of b.s. than they would otherwise. I'm not sure who pays for the tactical gear wearing security guards at the entrance looking ready for Iraq, but it can't be cheap.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
    > The Target on 4th street has significantly more staff running around constantly unlocking things and tending to this sort of b.s. than they would otherwise. Are you certain, or were they running 3 people ragged who will burn out in a month and quit? Constant motion can make it seem like there are more people, but I also remember the 1990s and seeing at least one person per department in a Kmart, some just monitoring their area. A bigbox store like Target would've had 2 people for the cash registers up front, at least one in customer service, and one per department during off-peak hours. If you're telling me you're seeing a dozen people for certain, I'll believe you, but I am wondering if it wasn't actually fewer. And besides all that, I was thinking more along the lines of CVS and Walgreens, which are the stores I know of locking everything behind glass.
- antonymoose 1y ago
  I live in a deep Red Bible thumping, back the blue, law and order county / state. About 7 years ago a former schoolmate of mine shot a man 6 times over a bad drug deal, fled the state to California. He was captured by the US Marshal and brought back to the county jail where he bonded out after 3 month. After his bonding out, he drove over to the victim’s parent’s house and performed a drive-by shooting, injuring none but did kill livestock. He was arrested again, taken to the county jail, and bonded out after several months. The issue finally reached a plea bargain, they dropped all charges related to both shooting, had him plead guilty to felony firearms charge, and gave him time served and 5 years probation. This man is a grown adult with felony priors, and got a proverbial slap on the wrist. Never saw a day of state prison, likely never will. If this is how we treat serious violent crime, I’m not surprised in TFA at all.
energywut 1y ago
Putting poor, desperate people in jail isn't going to solve the systemic issues that create poor, desperate people. Locking up people for petty theft is almost certainly FAR more expensive than the cost of the materials being stolen. It costs tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars to house an inmate every year, to say nothing of the damage it causes that inmate. Prisons make criminals more likely to commit crime in the future. A person would have to be stealing like 40 bottles of mouthwash every single day for it to be cheaper to jail an inmate rather than just replace the mouthwash for the business. Cases like that also clog the justice system and prevent solving more serious crimes, deplete shared resources like police and public defenders, and overcrowd prisons. Even if you aren't a prison abolitionist like me, surely the rational approach here isn't "Pay more and increase the likelyhood the petty criminal becomes a serious criminal". It just makes zero rational sense to try and solve the issue that way.
- 3eb7988a1663 1y ago
  This article claims that the inmate costs per state range from $23k/year (Arkansas) to $307k/year (Massachusetts). https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cost-per-prisoner-in-us-states/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cost-per-prisoner-in-us-sta...
- BeFlatXIII 1y ago
  > Locking up people for petty theft is almost certainly FAR more expensive than the cost of the materials being stolen Who pays matters.
  - energywut 1y ago
    We pay. We pay to house inmates. It costs us a TON of money to house prison populations.
- rahimnathwani 1y ago
  Prisons make criminals more likely to commit crime in the future. Prisons make people less likely to become criminals. Your comment focuses on prison and the impact it has on a single criminal who is caught, convicted, and put in prison. Sometimes this is a useful way to look at things. I think it's far more useful to consider prison's impact on all the people who are not in prison. It serves as a crime deterrent.
qingcharles 1y ago
Depends on the area. The area I lived in last year, it was rare to enter a Walgreens that wasn't actively being pillaged by shoplifters. I remember when they announced they were closing the only local Wal-mart (due to excessive shoplifting, allegedly) -- that same day the shoplifters went in like a swarm of locusts and stripped it bare. They had police at both exits, but they were powerless.

mauvehaus 1y ago

From the end of World War II until the mid-1970s, the proportion of Americans in prison each year never exceeded 120 per 100,000 That's a funny way of saying 0.12%. Is there a reason for this? It sure doesn't make it easy to compare the numbers they're giving with other numbers given as percentages. I guess if you're considering a sufficiently small population you could go from ~600,000 people in Vermont * 120/100,000 -> ~720 imprisoned people in Vermont trivially, but we're the second smallest state. This certainly doesn't scale to cities over a million. At least I'd start having to think harder about it.

WorkerBee28474 1y ago
> 120 per 100,000 ... Is there a reason for this? Crime statistics (e.g. homicides) are often quoted as 'n per 100,000 population'. It's probably also easier for mental math, e.g. here's a city with 1 million population, that's 10 100Ks, so 1200 people in prison.
- InitialLastName 1y ago
  It also lets you abstract away or compare to stats that are scaled to population but might not be 1:1 with a person, e.g. "thefts per 100,000 population per year" where one person might either commit or be the victim of multiple thefts in a year.
everforward 1y ago
120 per 100,000 includes significant digits. 0.12% could be anywhere from 120-124 per 100,000. You'd really want 0.120%, but that's confusing for different reasons. Worse would be 1,000 per 100,000, which is 1% but there's no way to tell that it's not rounded or truncated.
- ninthcat 1y ago
  "120" and "0.12%" both have 2 significant digits. "120." and "0.120%" have 3 significant digits.

outside1234 1y ago

Crime is also way down over the last 20 years: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/24/what-the-data-says-about-crime-in-the-us/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/24/what-the-...

FrustratedMonky 1y ago
Because of those tough on crime republicans. Lets see if cutting education has any impact over the next 20 years.
- jandrewrogers 1y ago
  Crime reduction is strongly correlated with an aging population. Crime is largely a young man's game.
  - FrustratedMonky 1y ago
    Young and hungry, without opportunity. Also something being cut with reduced food aid and education.
    - electriclove 1y ago
      Education? Free Food Aid? In the US, people are not starving
      - FrustratedMonky 1y ago
        Just because a lot of people are fat, doesn't mean it is evenly distributed. That is just a right talking point about how we are so spoiled. Plenty of kids need food. Kids learn better when not hungry. And Republicans are cutting school food programs.
      - mrguyorama 1y ago
        13% of American households experienced food insecurity in 2023, which means "these households were uncertain of having or unable to acquire enough food to meet the needs of all their members because they had insufficient money or other resources for food." 5% (6.8 million households) experienced "very low food security" which is "normal eating patterns of one or more household members were disrupted and food intake was reduced at times during the year because they had insufficient money or other resources for food" American food security is so bad in plenty of places that we can still get notable increases in academic performance just by giving people food Lack of access to food is literally holding the US back.

amelius 1y ago

[flagged]

GuinansEyebrows 1y ago

this is great news. but... i fear the new avenues of business sought by companies that operate for-profit prisons - i don't expect they'll just eat the losses of declining populations in their main moneymakers, and we're already starting to see them work on detention facilities for DHS etc.

throwaway48476 1y ago
Detention facilities for deportations is an inherently fast shrinking population.
- GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
  at some point, maybe. i have no trust in DHS whatsoever.
  - pessimizer 1y ago
    But do you think they'd start letting more people into the country, just to charge to detain and deport them? It's actually sort of an ideal solution. Big business gets back labor that it can threaten to deport if it demands anything, then they can clean up on the public-private deportations. Factory managers could send ICE a list of their most annoying employees to visit. It would be so 80's, I almost typed "the INS."
    - GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
      what you're describing is more or less already happening. don't think h1b visaholders won't become a target.
      - throwaway48476 1y ago
        You think if an H1B is canceled that they would illegally overstay?
FireBeyond 1y ago

strict9 1y ago

>Rapidly declining numbers of youth are committing crimes, getting arrested, and being incarcerated. This matters because young offenders are the raw material that feeds the prison system: As one generation ages out, another takes its place on the same horrid journey. Another factor which will soon impact this, if it isn't already, is the rapidly changing nature of youth. Fertility rates have been dropping since 2009 or so. Average age of parents is increasing. Teen pregnancy on a long and rapid decline. All of these working together means that each year the act of having a child is much more deliberate and the parents likely having more resources. Which in turn should mean fewer youth delinquency, which as the article notes is how most in prison started out.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
bluGill 1y ago
> the act of having a child is much more deliberate and the parents likely having more resources This is both good and bad. Having a child is very difficult, but it gets harder as you get older. You lack a lot of monitory resources as a teen or the early 20s, but you have a lot more energy, as you get older your body starts decaying you will lack energy. A kid had at 40 will still be depending on your when you are 55 (kids is only 15), and if the kids goes to college may have some dependency on you when your peers are retiring. Plus if your kids have kids young as well as you, you be around and have some energy for grandkids. Don't read the above as advocating having kids too young, it is not. However don't wait until you think it is the perfect time. If you are 25 you should be seriously thinking in the next 2 years, and by 30 have them (if of course kids are right for you - that is a complex consideration I'm not going to get into). Do not let fear of how much it will cost or desire for more resources first stop you from having kids when you are still young enough to do well.
- c22 1y ago
  I had kids in my late 30s and they tested my patience and emotional regulation to an extent greater than any other experience of my life. I was somewhat emotionally volatile in my 20s and I can't imagine my kids having better outcomes if I'd had to learn to parent at that time in my life.

kovek 1y ago

This is interesting. I don't know why it's happening. However, this book deserves a mention: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Natur... . It shares statistics on how violence has been decreasing throughout the history of humanity.

reverendsteveii 1y ago
as a followup to that (excellent) book, here's Barry Glassner - A Culture of Fear. The Better Angels of Our Nature talks about how violence has always been declining. A Culture of Fear talks about how the rate of that decline has been increasing since the 90s but people actually perceive things as becoming more dangerous rather than less, and attempts to come up with an answer as to why that may be the case.
- SAI_Peregrinus 1y ago
  The most obvious answer is large-scale media. I can learn about a shooting on the other side of the country within hours of it happening, and think "that could happen where I am". Likewise with any other news, which by definition is about out-of-the-ordinary events. There's more news about violence because there's more news, not because there's more violence, but it feels like there's more violence.
  - spogbiper 1y ago
    "if it bleeds, it leads" is (or was, i'm old) a common saying regarding the news media. It may be that there is more news that scares us because scaring us is profitable
  - reverendsteveii 1y ago
    Piling onto this, humans have both recency and frequency biases that, combined with the attention-as-currency news industry, tend to lead to an increase in the perceived danger of violent crime that's entirely disconnected from the actual statistical danger of violent crime. You hear about more crimes, you hear about each crime more often, and your estimate of how much crime there actually is increases.

rawgabbit 1y ago

This is good news. The level of crime and number of offenders has decreased. Quotes from the article: > As of 2016—the most recent year for which data are available—the average man in state prison had been arrested nine times, was currently incarcerated for his sixth time, and was serving a 16-year sentence. > But starting in the late 1960s, a multidecade crime wave swelled in America, and an unprecedented number of adolescents and young adults were criminally active. In response, the anti-crime policies of most local, state, and federal governments became more and more draconian. > Rapidly declining numbers of youth are committing crimes, getting arrested, and being incarcerated.

WalterBright 1y ago
> Rapidly declining numbers of youth May be the result of a rapidly declining birth rate.
bilbo0s 1y ago
Rapidly declining numbers of youth are committing crimes, getting arrested, and being incarcerated Well also, the number one crime these youths were getting arrested for was drug possession. With drug trafficking being second. 15 years ago the vast majority of people in prison in texas were there for drug possession or trafficking. If all of a sudden everyone's drug of choice is marijuana, and it's being decriminalized everywhere, I have to think that makes it hard to get the numbers you used to get in terms of arrests. Not that this is a bad thing. I'm just pointing out that while arrests did go down, I don't necessarily believe that the prevalence of pot smoking decreased. One benefit is that this new environment should help them to have better futures than the youths that came before them.
TrainedMonkey 1y ago
Like all complex phenomena 1960s crime wave probably has many causes, but lead poisoning stands out - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis
- ivape 1y ago

rwmj 1y ago

The question not even asked by the article is ... why?

ToucanLoucan 1y ago
The answer is likely unknowable, but I can think of several factors that tie into the plummeting birth rate: - While the Freakanomics citation of widespread access to abortion has been debunked as a sole cause, I think it remains credible for at least a contributing factor. Fewer young people born to folks who are too poor/busy/not wanting to raise them is doubtlessly going to reduce the number of young offenders who become the prison system's regular customers their whole lives. - Beyond just abortion, contraceptives and contraceptive education have gotten much more accessible. For all the endless whining from the right about putting condoms on cucumbers poisoning children's minds with vegetable-based erotica, as it turns out, teens have sex, as they probably have since time immemorial, and if you teach them how to do it safely and don't threaten their safety if they do, they generally will do it safely. - Additionally, there has been a gradual ramp-up in how badly negative outcomes stack in life, and "messing up" on your path to adulthood carries higher costs than it ever has. Possibly contradicting myself, teens are having less sex than ever, as all broad forms of socializing have decreased apart from social media, which is exploding but doesn't really present opportunities to bone down. Add to it, young people are more monitored than they've ever been. When I was coming up, I had hours alone to myself to do whatever I wanted, largely wherever I wanted as long as I could get there and my parents knew (though they couldn't verify where I was). Now we have a variety of apps for digitally stalking your kids, and that's not even going into the mess of extracurricular activities, after school events, classes, study sessions, sports, etc. that modern kids get. They barely have any unmonitored time anymore. - Another point: alternative sexuality (or the lack thereof) is more accepted than it's ever been by mainstream society, and anything that isn't man + woman is virtually guaranteed to not create unwanted pregnancy unless something truly interesting happens. - Lastly, I would cite that even if you have a heterosexual couple who is interested in having kids, that's harder than ever. A ton of folks my age can't even afford a home, let alone one suitable for starting a family. The ones that do start families live either in or uncomfortably close to poverty, and usually in one or another variety of insecurity. The ones that can afford it often choose not to for... I mean there's so many reasons bringing kids into the world right now feels unappealing. It's a ton of work that's saddled onto 2 people in a categorically a-historic way, in an economy where two full time salaries is basically mandatory if you want to have a halfway decent standard of living, and double that for one that includes children. That's not even going into the broader state of the world, how awful the dating market is especially for women, so many reasons and factors. Any stressed animal population stops reproduction first. I don't see why we'd think people would be any different.

casenmgreen 1y ago

Freakonomics argued that crime correlates to whether or not abortion is available. If it is not, crime rates are up, and by a lot. If it is, crime rates are down. When you flip from one to the other, takes about 15/20 years for the effect to show up. Rationale is that forcing parents to have their kids when they're not ready for them significantly increases delinquency in young adults. This is apparently the only possible theory at the moment. It's not proven, of course, but the other theories which were given have been found lacking. This is the only theory which has some evidence, and hasn't been found to be wrong.

mystified5016 1y ago
I'd wager that the foster system is a huge factor. Poverty is likely the rest. When you don't give a human resources, they will find a way to take it. When you force humans with no resources to have kids, well...
gosub100 1y ago
Why abortion and not contraceptives?
- wil421 1y ago
  They probably aren’t using them.
- iknowstuff 1y ago
  Why not both
  - gosub100 1y ago
    one can be prevented by the other
    - bdangubic 1y ago
      not prevented… (trust me :)) but best we can do!!

deadbabe 1y ago

There are many reasons why crime is in decline, but ultimately its economic. Crime used to pay. Your expected return on a crime was pretty good for the risk involved. Nowadays though, because of technology, risk has increased while the returns have also decreased. Barriers to entry for crimes worth committing are now way higher. Robbing a gas station decades ago could yield a nice chunk of cash that could probably pay bills for a month. But now with less people using cash and cost of living increasing, there’s no point. Most registers have pitiful amount of cash. And mugging strangers on the street is likely even worse. No one carries wads of cash anymore. The hot industry to be in is ransomware. The sums are vast and the risk is low if you do it right. But it’s very white collar, it requires skills that your typical low level criminal won’t have. Overall, it means there’s a lot of crimes that are done not for any financial reason, just for personal satisfaction.

permo-w 1y ago
not forgetting that CCTV is absolutely ubiquitous and high def, where previously it was reasonably rare and low quality
- deadbabe 1y ago
  And most young people would rather have social media that lets them easily be tracked than staying anonymous for the purposes of committing crimes.
  - lupusreal 1y ago
    Even if you leave your phone at home to create an alibi for yourself, it is very likely that CCTVs will see you enroute to the crime scene, if not at the crime scene itself. Between businesses with cameras, front door cameras on houses, and traffic cameras, it's very difficult to travel anywhere without leaving a trace that investigators can pick up after the fact if they're sufficiently motivated.
    - BLKNSLVR 1y ago

holmesworcester 1y ago

How much of this is due to smartphones? The years seem to line up. 2014 seemed like the big year where smartphone ubiquity changed US teen culture. Less boredom, dumb adventure, drinking, etc. (For better or worse but in this case better.)

y-curious 1y ago
Devils advocate: smartphones have made antisocial tiktok trends, "fast money" hacks and paint an unrealistic portrait of success. Before, only rappers could be young and rich and flashy. Now, seemingly regular teens are millionaires and this is constantly fed into young people's feeds.
- janalsncm 1y ago
  That might be true but it’s another topic. If your point is that the benefits of crime reduction due to smartphones are outweighed by harms to mental health, then I think most people would disagree. But this is also probably painting far too rosy a picture of what Meta is doing.
- makeitdouble 1y ago
  I hear your point as: up until then scams, gambling and Ponzi schemes were for adults with strong purchasing power (could sink all the family's money in one single decision), when with smartphones everyone gets to enjoy screwing themselves directly. My hot take is that previous generations weren't better prepared for the adult world than today's kids. They were more "mature" (sex, violence, abuse resistance) in some respects, but not specially ready for caring about society.
deeg 1y ago
Or maybe video games. Lots of teen boys staying at home playing Xbox instead of getting into trouble.
- mixmastamyk 1y ago
  I blazed that trail in the 80s.

kiernanmcgowan 1y ago

> After peaking at just more than 1.6 million Americans in 2009 > But a prison is a portrait of what happened five, 10, and 20 years ago. Is this just a result of the dropping crime rates since the mid 90s, but on a 20ish year lag?

Jtsummers 1y ago
That's what the article goes on to describe, yes. Declining crime rates mean fewer new prisoners, but high recidivism rates plus long sentences means many old prisoners are still in prison. As those old prisoners die off or for whatever reason don't commit more crimes after release, the total population declines.
standardUser 1y ago
Mandatory minimum sentences can be 10, 15 or 20 years depending on the quantity of drug and other factors. Often just for possession. The US spent several decades filling our prisons with people using those sentences, and we still do, just not as aggressively.

oceansky 1y ago

Bad news for prison owners

egypturnash 1y ago

GOOD

kazinator 1y ago

In part due to simple demographics? If most prisoners are younger, starting their incarceration incidents in their teens or twenties, then basically the fewer young people you have, the less people in prison: https://populationeducation.org/u-s-population-pyramids-over-time/ https://populationeducation.org/u-s-population-pyramids-over... Compare 1960 to 2020.

standardUser 1y ago

They fail to mention the reason the prison population soared in the 70's and 80's, because of ultra-harsh prison sentencing for drugs. In retrospect, those laws appear to have been deliberately designed to create a massive and permanent prison population, far beyond what locking people up only for non-consensual crimes could ever sustain. Now, most of those laws have been rolled back. In the past 10-15 years the number of people locked up at the state level for drug crimes is down 30% even though drug arrests remain high. And those still getting locked up are getting shorter sentences. (though over 40% of inmates at the federal level are still there for drugs) I'm not sure why they failed to mention such a key issues related to incarceration. They repeatedly refer to the surge in crime in the drug war era as a "crime wave". And they link to 3 other pro-drug war articles by the same author. Maybe Keith Humphreys had a bad trip in his youth and now he's making it everyone's problem.

viktorcode 1y ago

In the light of that dynamic I fund it curious that Russian prisons population is rapidly declining too, but for very different reason.

low_tech_love 1y ago
You might be half joking, but your hypothesis is interesting to show how many different reasons can exist for the same phenomenon. Lots of people here talking about lead, for whatever reason, but also decriminalisation of drugs, abortion, etc. Most are logical explanations, even if contradictory. Very nice to see how we need to be super aware of statistics; we can force the numbers to say anything we want.
- ivanjermakov 1y ago
  This is an amazing domain for correlation vs causation, because a lot of hypotheses make sense.

bomba_tom 1y ago

[flagged]

msgodel 1y ago
[flagged]
- analognoise 1y ago
  Sorry, is this sarcasm? That's a frequent racist dog-whistle to justify systemically unjust (read: racist) policing; I'm surprised to see it on HN.
  - bdangubic 1y ago
    you shouldn’t be :)
  - keybored 1y ago
    Everything bad is due to lack of intelligence and everything good is caused by intelligence. Average day on the HN.
    - analognoise 1y ago
      The irony is that seeing things that way implies a massive lack of intelligence.
      - keybored 1y ago
        Intelligent people can have a too narrow lens of the world too. Like when sociological issues becomes all about culture and intelligence.

1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago

The Atlantic suggests this results from the release of those convicted during a decades long crime wave, which apprently took place when many of us grew up. Perhaps it also tracks with a progressive decline in law enforcement. Whether that is because crime waves not longer exist or whether it is some other reason is a question for the reader. A substanbtial amount of crime is now done via internet. Few are ever convicted.

saulpw 1y ago
Marijuana possession was the number one crime and is now legal in a majority of states. This seems like the high-order bit.
- 0xbadcafebee 1y ago
  ^ This. The drug war was an attempt for conservatives to punish poor people for using a harmless drug (marijuana) to help cope with systemic inequality, and kids for wanting to have fun. From 1950-1970, America introduced new mandatory minimums for possession of marijuana. First-time offenses carried a minimum of 2-10 yrs in prison and a fine of up to $20,000. They repealed these minimums in 1970 because it did jack shit to stop people smoking. The govt even recommended decriminalizing marijuana in 1970, but Nixon rejected it. But then came The Parents. As fucking usual, parents "concerned for their children" began a years-long lobbying and marketing effort to convince the public any kind of drug was evil and harming kids. Through the 1980s their lobbying spread to all corners of the government, influencing messaging and policy. So finally in 1986, Reagan introduced new mandatory minimums for marijuana, based on amount. Having 100 marijuana plants was the same crime as 100 grams of heroin. And then they went further; if you we caught with marijuana three times, you got a life sentence. Life. For pot. In 1989, Bush Sr. officially declared the "new" War on Drugs. And we've all been paying for it ever since.
  - anonzzzies 1y ago
    It is not a harmless drug though. Less harmless than most others, but not harmless.

kieranmaine 1y ago

One more thing to throw into the mix. The treatment of ADHD might be helping: "ADHD medication still reduces risks, but benefits have weakened over time" https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2835661 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/...

vharuck 1y ago
I once asked myself, "What did people with ADHD as severe as mine do before there was medication?" The obvious answer was: drugs. People like me used to do a lot of drugs.
- eikenberry 1y ago
  I think taking available stimulants, like nicotine and caffeine, were also ways of coping as they generally help with ADHD focus (or the lack thereof). I know anecdotally that I really hit my academic stride in college when I took up both habits. I still notice a small difference after coffee (gave up smoking a long time back).

mensetmanusman 1y ago

The best stat is that nearly 90% of prisoners had absent fathers.

knowitnone 1y ago

only because the US is soft on crime - so soft that drugs that were illegal are no longer illegal

ilitirit 1y ago

I'd like to see stats on how many people are getting arrested for petty crimes e.g. marijuana (which isn't even a crime in some contexts any more) back then vs now.

snickerdoodle12 1y ago

Does this include those sent to the gulag in El Salvador?

plantwallshoe 1y ago

Is it possible that incarceration had the intended effect? Did an entire generation grow up seeing their fathers and uncles locked up and decide that there must be a better way?

boston_clone 1y ago
there is no research to support the notion that mass incarceration leads to a reduction in crime; full stop.
- wskinner 1y ago
  The scholarly debate is over how large and how lasting the effect is, not whether any evidence exists.
  - boston_clone 1y ago
    Is it not that studies show how mass incarceration increases likelihood of children to be offenders, not make them less likely to do so? e.g., an incarcerated parent before the age of 12 increases the chances of being in jail after 18 by 230% I genuinely don’t recall anything to support the idea that incarceration decreases crime, in general, at all…
khasan222 1y ago
I would argue that not having a male role model in your life is way worse than seeing the consequences enacted on another. This even if their was a gain from watching others suffer, the lack of discipline, guidance, sternness, is way more detrimental than the positives of fearing the consequences
qingcharles 1y ago
Absolutely not at all. I have a lot of experience with the justice system and I can tell you that incarceration has almost no positive benefits for those that are redeemable. And for those who cannot function in the real world (i.e. serious untreatable mental problems resulting in constant criminality) we need to find a softer way to keep them separated from being able to harm the public.

b3ing 1y ago

Crime has been going down since the 90s, video games and online porn probably helped this

m3kw9 1y ago

When they decide change the threshold for arrests, like the SF robberies or under some dollar amount.

anovikov 1y ago

Problem isn't with people who are in prison. Problem is with people who are out of prison with prison experience - most of them are thoroughly criminalised for life. So one should count people who served serious time behind bars, and now out - ideally, age-corrected, because people age out of crime and someone who got in jail at 18 and left at 50 is probably ok and isn't a big danger. That is the metric that society should strive to minimise.

qingcharles 1y ago
It's essentially that once you leave prison you have zero resources, usually all your friends are gone, often your family shuns you, you can't get a job due to your record and lack of skills, you can't rent any accommodation due to background checks, and you are on a knife-edge parole that will send you back for any tiny infraction. And it's easy for someone to just give in and go back to prison. Prison is only scary the first time. After that you walk back in and meet people you know who don't judge you. You know the staff. You know the routines. Do a few more years for the parole violation and see if things have changed next time around. If not, repeat ad infinitum.

zombot 1y ago

Prison is big business in the U.S., so I fully expect red alerts going off and panic attacks sweeping the country.

wetpaws 1y ago
[dead]

philipallstar 1y ago

Incarceration isn't the same thing as crime. If the most populous state by far (California, almost 40m people in 2025) passes a law[0] that stealing things under $950 is a misdemeanor rather than a felony, then crime can continue while incarceration rates drop. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_California_Proposition_47 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_California_Proposition_47

pyuser583 1y ago
It’s very hard to record crime rates in prisons. Incarcerating people likely to commit crimes will mean their future crimes are much less likely to be reported. This does not mean less crime, it means crime just isn’t being recorded. Even the most rigorous studies account for crimes committed in prisons.
snarf21 1y ago
This is a very one sided presentation of the facts. This fact is generally used to suggest that theft is all a liberal blue state issue. The highest felony theft amount in the US is in red Texas and is $2500. Around 40 states have a *HIGHER* felony $ limit for theft than California. If you think about it, it makes a lot of sense to not spend $10K+ to jail someone for stealing $500 of stuff. There are more cost effective ways to rehabilitate people. However, our society doesn't prioritize helping as much as punishing.
- potato3732842 1y ago
  The whole hoopla around the felony status is just a proxy. when you commit a bunch of felonies there's all sorts of coded in law and process (sentencing guidelines) that apply (as well as KPIs, cops and prosecutors care about being able to say they put felons away) so you can't really be habitually felonious very much without winding up behind bars. Below the felony threshold the system is far more free to let you go back out and keep doing what you're doing. So the actual dollar threshold of felony theft is really just a crappy (because not all states go equally hard on non-felony crime) proxy for the rate of recidivism.
- almosthere 1y ago

kevin_thibedeau 1y ago

We may see a boom in crime as functional illiteracy rates climb, which is already correlated with criminal behavior. A generation that is weaned on having a computer do everything by voice command and gaining passive knowledge exclusively through videos will have more living on the margins who can't function well in a society that needs some base level of competence in understanding and interpreting text.

cooper_ganglia 1y ago

[flagged]

inglor_cz 1y ago
I don't believe that, at least not in the whole nation (certain cities may be an exception). US cities used to be a lot more violent three decades ago. Fudging manslaughters statistics is not easy. I suspect the reason is the same as with everything else - kids glued to screens don't have time or even stamina for gang activity, all their attention being consumed by a highly addictive product at hand.
whoknowsidont 1y ago
Do you have any clear examples of this that demonstrate the consistency of the pattern you're describing?
- cooper_ganglia 1y ago
  Sure, a quick search unfortunately gives you result after result! https://www.wsmv.com/2025/06/23/family-woman-murdered-nashville-files-150m-suit-against-bonding-companies/ https://www.wsmv.com/2025/06/23/family-woman-murdered-nashvi... https://nypost.com/2025/02/28/us-news/career-criminal-free-without-bail-charged-in-fatal-nyc-shooting-while-still-wearing-court-ordered-ankle-monitor/ https://nypost.com/2025/02/28/us-news/career-criminal-free-w... https://www.fox26houston.com/news/the-judge-did-her-job-defense-responds-criticism-over-release-suspect-deputy-killing https://www.fox26houston.com/news/the-judge-did-her-job-defe... https://nypost.com/2025/02/22/us-news/nyc-career-criminal-tyriek-martin-handed-bail-by-manhattan-judge-after-attempted-rape-on-subway/ https://nypost.com/2025/02/22/us-news/nyc-career-criminal-ty... https://nypost.com/2025/06/21/us-news/plucky-nyc-victim-94-vows-to-stand-her-ground-after-assault/ https://nypost.com/2025/06/21/us-news/plucky-nyc-victim-94-v... https://www.fox5ny.com/news/nyc-judges-violent-perps-report https://www.fox5ny.com/news/nyc-judges-violent-perps-report https://nypost.com/2025/03/22/us-news/meet-wanda-licitra-nycs-worst-pro-defendant-judge-sources/ https://nypost.com/2025/03/22/us-news/meet-wanda-licitra-nyc... https://nypost.com/2025/04/24/us-news/hooligan-whose-alleged-gunfight-led-to-death-of-harlem-community-pillar-momma-zee-was-out-on-bail-in-slashing-case/ https://nypost.com/2025/04/24/us-news/hooligan-whose-alleged... https://nypost.com/2025/06/25/us-news/serial-perv-who-tried-kissing-nyc-subway-riders-feet-cut-loose-with-no-bail-then-has-twisted-outburst-your-mother-has-a-foot-fetish/ https://nypost.com/2025/06/25/us-news/serial-perv-who-tried-... https://nypost.com/2025/01/07/us-news/nyc-sees-staggering-146-5-spike-in-felony-assaults-by-repeat-offenders-as-top-cops-broken-system-that-keeps-putting-criminals-back-on-street/ https://nypost.com/2025/01/07/us-news/nyc-sees-staggering-14... https://nypost.com/2025/03/07/us-news/maniac-busted-for-slugging-pregnant-woman-37-on-nyc-subway-fourth-random-attack-on-female-straphangers-in-as-many-months-sources/ https://nypost.com/2025/03/07/us-news/maniac-busted-for-slug... https://nypost.com/2024/08/11/us-news/brute-charged-in-attack-on-mta-workers-freed-after-cutting-deal-only-to-go-on-slashing-spree/ https://nypost.com/2024/08/11/us-news/brute-charged-in-attac... https://www.foxnews.com/us/blue-states-bail-laws-panned-police-chief-violent-suspects-repeatedly-cut-loose https://www.foxnews.com/us/blue-states-bail-laws-panned-poli...

charlescearl 1y ago

The Black southeast is still in over the Soviet Union’s rates during the 1930s https://www.prisonpolicy.org/profiles/LA.html https://www.prisonpolicy.org/profiles/LA.html. Racialized carceral warfare.

shadowtree 1y ago

While my Target puts Legos behind plexiglas. While my Safeway puts deodorant behind plexiglas. Statistics are amazing. Even crime stats are "down". Don't report, don't convict - done.

photochemsyn 1y ago
This points more towards organized crime rings targeting stores, taking large amounts of the same popular items, then reselling them on eBay or Amazon. If you have a smallish number of people doing a largish number of crimes, this won't be reflected in incarceration statistics (particularly if the resellers rarely get caught).
- chaps 1y ago
  "This points more towards" -- you have any source towards this? :)
  - dfxm12 1y ago
    Why selectively put this onus on the person you've responded to and not the person at the top of this thread?
    - chaps 1y ago
      Um. The same could be said to you? I don't see what your point is.
  - germinalphrase 1y ago
    I know that in recent years Target has announced that they were investigating, in partnership with local and federal law enforcement, organized theft rings. It was publicly reported on here in Minneapolis.
    - chaps 1y ago
      Many, many of those claims were found to be significantly exaggerated. It bothers me immensely that people still talk about this nonsense. https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-12-14/column-retail-lobby-confesses-it-lied-about-organized-shoplifting-rings https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-12-14/column-ret...

almosthere 1y ago

After covid they changed who will go to jail for what because they decided overcrowding with covid was killing inmates. I think it was the right thing to do at the time. However since 2021ish crime has been skyrocketing. It's definitely time to figure out the next steps. I want to live in a peaceful, safe society. It makes sense to separate those that can't help but destroy the peace. It has also been stated that something like 90% of crime is performed by a very small percentage of people and most of it is just the same person over and over and over. Those people must be separated from society.

black_13 1y ago

[dead]

fredfish 1y ago

An interesting and upbeat article.. But the death rate from overdose went from 9 to 32 per 100000 in the last 2 decades. Using their entrance logic, if I understand what this means afa per annum, couldn't that amount to a few hundred per 100000 who are not cycling into long prison terms because they are dead? There's been something like 900k excess deaths since 1968 compared to if the rate was just flat since then. That's a lot of people who probably had a much higher chance of incarceration than average even if you only consider drug law and the more recently someone was born the more likely they are to have already overdosed at any given age.

deleted 1y ago
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