6 ms·

I've seen claims that the average IQ in prisons is roughly equivalent to the average IQ of the general population. The line most commonly mentioned after that f

I've seen claims that the average IQ in prisons is roughly equivalent to the average IQ of the general population. The line most commonly mentioned after that fact is "and those are the ones that got caught." I'm not sure how true that is but what I do believe is that the following is 100% true: - smart people - who grow up in disadvantaged locales - and have emotional trauma due to the above - may end up in a life of crime and then prison How do I know this? I've worked with a couple people like this. Some ended up in prison, others almost went to prison and later on went to work in corporate America (no sarcasm intended here).

FpUser 6mo ago
>"smart people - who grow up in disadvantaged locales - and have emotional trauma due to the above - may end up in a life of crime and then prison" I believe this to be true and some of my former schoolmates who were brilliant IQ wise and got high marks on math and physics still ended up in jails. Some were later able to recover and lead more productive life
mothballed 6mo ago
Crime is also just more accepted in "disadvantaged locales." Drinking openly is illegal in most of Mexico and the USA. If the area is run down and the shops are broken I will crack open a beer on the street without a second thought. I wouldn't think of doing it openly in some yuppie neighborhood where some Karen will rat your ass out in 5 minutes.
- shmeeed 6mo ago
  Aka the Broken Window Theory.
  - mothballed 6mo ago
    Sort of yeah, but in this case "broken windows" are used to determine the culture of an area, even if you fixed the "broken windows" I would use some other clues. I think the broken window theory relies on the idea if you fixed the broken windows crime would change, which I don't think is necessarily true.
- cindyllm 6mo ago
  [dead]
coldtea 6mo ago
>I've seen claims that the average IQ in prisons is roughly equivalent to the average IQ of the general population. The line most commonly mentioned after that fact is "and those are the ones that got caught." This includes white collar crime and all kinds of non-violent crimes though. Is it the same for the violent crime subset?
- jcgrillo 6mo ago
  Yes. The biasing function is that (mostly) only the less smart ones get exposed and caught.
- cortesoft 6mo ago
  Hmm, what would make you assume perpetrators of violent crimes would have a different IQ level than other crimes? My initial instinct would be that violent crimes are often committed out of passion, and are unrelated to intelligence.
  - coldtea 6mo ago
    >Hmm, what would make you assume perpetrators of violent crimes would have a different IQ level than other crimes? For starters there's the lead exposure relation to violent crime, that is accepted as a factor, and which is also known to lower IQ. That lead-affected criminal population would drive average violent criminal IQ down, even if the lead exposure worked through a different causual mechanism and lower IQ was just an orthogonal effect. Besides several studies have found the general correlation. >My initial instinct would be that violent crimes are often committed out of passion, and are unrelated to intelligence. Choice of outlet for the outburst, impulse control and other factors however are related to intelligence. Besides you're just covering "crimes of passion" here. There are career criminals doing homicides, gang shootings, etc, plus physical violence unrelated to passion, but related to intimidation, theft, etc.
    - alphawhisky 6mo ago
      Don't forget indirect violence, like electing politicians that use your tax money to blow up kids.
Illniyar 6mo ago
The extra line supposes that being smart reduces the chances of getting caught. Which from what I gather isn't very true - being smart can often lead to over confidence and making mistakes, and also a lot of crime is not premeditated.
- kdhaskjdhadjk 6mo ago
  [flagged]
  - mothballed 6mo ago
    Or being disliked by a DoJ who can pressure a judge (who's other legal experience is being a career prosecutor for the feds as well) to not allow many forms of defense, while expending millions upon millions of their own money and "expert witnesses" to tell lies that you can't afford to defend against, and if you will only sign on the dotted line you will only get 3 years instead of a gazillion. This is how they got Samourai Wallet guy to admit to "operating an unlicensed money transmitter" business despite FINCen saying he wasn't even a money transmitter which means how would he even get a license?
  - jamilton 6mo ago
    It's still crime if it's moral! I think it's really important to not conflate the law with morality.
    - kdhaskjdhadjk 6mo ago
      [flagged]
      - alphawhisky 6mo ago
        Same, that's why I get super abortions every week. Might even get gay married. If it's not immoral, it's not a crime.
      - 47282847 6mo ago
        You may enjoy the movie “Sovereign”.
qingcharles 6mo ago
Some people really activate their brains once they get locked up. The things I've seen people construct from literal garbage in prison. Tattoo guns are a popular one. Obviously half the population has a way of making some sort of device analogous to a car cigarette lighter in prison by finding staples, bits of wire, foil etc that they can stick in a 110V outlet to heat up and light their drugs from. Necessity really is the mother of invention. A friend and I got split up into different cell blocks because we were helping each other with litigation. Knowing this would happen we'd come up with a way to communicate across the facility. We had these 5x5 grids of letters, no "K", where 11 on the grid was A, 15 was E, 55 was Z etc. They had these touchscreen commissary kiosks where you could order food. The quantity of each item allowed up to 4 digits, e.g. 9999. So that gives you two letters. 1121 = AF for instance. We'd start at the top, Beef Noodles, 1121. Chicken Noodles, 2412 etc and work through the menu. We shared our login IDs with each other. We'd place these huge orders into the cart but never checkout. Then we'd log in to each other's accts from our separate cell blocks multiple times a day, read our messages and write our replies. Got caught eventually, 10 days in the Hole. I FOIA'd their investigation and it was very amusing seeing the report from the facility "Intelligence Dept" trying to decode all the messages.
- nextaccountic 6mo ago
  > A friend and I got split up into different cell blocks because we were helping each other with litigation. Are they legally able to prevent inmates from helping the litigation of another? That's insane The US is not a free society
  - gruez 6mo ago
    [flagged]
    - kdhaskjdhadjk 6mo ago
      [flagged]
    - nextaccountic 6mo ago
cjbgkagh 6mo ago
The average IQ of a prisoner is 90-95 which is a long way from 100.
- Enginerrrd 6mo ago
  Prison IQ is a very different distribution. As I recall, the top 2% IQ of the general population makes up something like 20% of the prison population. You also have quite a few at the other end. The gifted are more over represented in prison then black males, however, most of those gifted are themselves minorities.
  - cjbgkagh 6mo ago
    I’ll have to see some evidence on that, in my search it’s basically a normal bell curve shifted 8 pts down. The idea that 130+ IQ individuals make up 1/5th of the prison population does not pass the sniff test, that would be a crazy statistical aberration. In my search I found reports that 130+ IQ individuals only represent less than 0.4% of the prison population.
- LAC-Tech 6mo ago
  Is the average IQ of the US still 100?
  - cjbgkagh 6mo ago
    Roughly yes, it is declining. The Flynn effect was just smart people having kids later which has now normalized and reversed (with smart people having fewer kids).
  - throwawaymobule 6mo ago
    Isn't it always 100, by definition?
    - LAC-Tech 6mo ago
      I dont think IQ is based on american adults.
red-iron-pine 6mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_childhood_experiences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_childhood_experiences each ACE you experience ups the likelihood of all sorts of negative outcomes, with crime and addiction being very common. strong linkages to bad health outcomes, too.
- mothballed 6mo ago
  I wonder if there are any benefits of the adaptations made by those with higher ACE scores. Surely the adaptations we've evolved to make can't be entirely maladaptive. Here's one Emotional abuse: verbal threats, swearing at, insulting, or humiliating a child.[1][3] I'm trying to imagine what someone would be like if they reached 18 without ever having been "sworn at, insulted, or humiliated." Given this is one of the gentlest ways of correcting anti-social behavior, I can only imagine such person would be a maladapted nightmare.
  - red-iron-pine 6mo ago
    resilience is talked about in the wiki article. there are strategies that can be taught to increase resilience, and sometimes that may include some tough love. but there are differences between some tough love to build character vs. years of emotional and verbal abuse. one of the big kids calling you a loser on the playground is not ACE; your mom telling you're worthless and she hates you and you should have never been born for most of your childhood is. put another way, 8 weeks of military boot camp teaches you to handle some of the stresses you might encounter; it builds resilience. but 18 years of it would create someone deeply screwed up.

FpUser 6mo ago

>"smart people - who grow up in disadvantaged locales - and have emotional trauma due to the above - may end up in a life of crime and then prison" I believe this to be true and some of my former schoolmates who were brilliant IQ wise and got high marks on math and physics still ended up in jails. Some were later able to recover and lead more productive life

mothballed 6mo ago

Crime is also just more accepted in "disadvantaged locales." Drinking openly is illegal in most of Mexico and the USA. If the area is run down and the shops are broken I will crack open a beer on the street without a second thought. I wouldn't think of doing it openly in some yuppie neighborhood where some Karen will rat your ass out in 5 minutes.

shmeeed 6mo ago
Aka the Broken Window Theory.
- mothballed 6mo ago
  Sort of yeah, but in this case "broken windows" are used to determine the culture of an area, even if you fixed the "broken windows" I would use some other clues. I think the broken window theory relies on the idea if you fixed the broken windows crime would change, which I don't think is necessarily true.
cindyllm 6mo ago
[dead]

coldtea 6mo ago

>I've seen claims that the average IQ in prisons is roughly equivalent to the average IQ of the general population. The line most commonly mentioned after that fact is "and those are the ones that got caught." This includes white collar crime and all kinds of non-violent crimes though. Is it the same for the violent crime subset?

jcgrillo 6mo ago
Yes. The biasing function is that (mostly) only the less smart ones get exposed and caught.
cortesoft 6mo ago
Hmm, what would make you assume perpetrators of violent crimes would have a different IQ level than other crimes? My initial instinct would be that violent crimes are often committed out of passion, and are unrelated to intelligence.
- coldtea 6mo ago
  >Hmm, what would make you assume perpetrators of violent crimes would have a different IQ level than other crimes? For starters there's the lead exposure relation to violent crime, that is accepted as a factor, and which is also known to lower IQ. That lead-affected criminal population would drive average violent criminal IQ down, even if the lead exposure worked through a different causual mechanism and lower IQ was just an orthogonal effect. Besides several studies have found the general correlation. >My initial instinct would be that violent crimes are often committed out of passion, and are unrelated to intelligence. Choice of outlet for the outburst, impulse control and other factors however are related to intelligence. Besides you're just covering "crimes of passion" here. There are career criminals doing homicides, gang shootings, etc, plus physical violence unrelated to passion, but related to intimidation, theft, etc.
  - alphawhisky 6mo ago
    Don't forget indirect violence, like electing politicians that use your tax money to blow up kids.

Illniyar 6mo ago

The extra line supposes that being smart reduces the chances of getting caught. Which from what I gather isn't very true - being smart can often lead to over confidence and making mistakes, and also a lot of crime is not premeditated.

kdhaskjdhadjk 6mo ago
[flagged]
- mothballed 6mo ago
  Or being disliked by a DoJ who can pressure a judge (who's other legal experience is being a career prosecutor for the feds as well) to not allow many forms of defense, while expending millions upon millions of their own money and "expert witnesses" to tell lies that you can't afford to defend against, and if you will only sign on the dotted line you will only get 3 years instead of a gazillion. This is how they got Samourai Wallet guy to admit to "operating an unlicensed money transmitter" business despite FINCen saying he wasn't even a money transmitter which means how would he even get a license?
- jamilton 6mo ago
  It's still crime if it's moral! I think it's really important to not conflate the law with morality.
  - kdhaskjdhadjk 6mo ago
    [flagged]
    - alphawhisky 6mo ago
      Same, that's why I get super abortions every week. Might even get gay married. If it's not immoral, it's not a crime.
    - 47282847 6mo ago
      You may enjoy the movie “Sovereign”.

qingcharles 6mo ago

Some people really activate their brains once they get locked up. The things I've seen people construct from literal garbage in prison. Tattoo guns are a popular one. Obviously half the population has a way of making some sort of device analogous to a car cigarette lighter in prison by finding staples, bits of wire, foil etc that they can stick in a 110V outlet to heat up and light their drugs from. Necessity really is the mother of invention. A friend and I got split up into different cell blocks because we were helping each other with litigation. Knowing this would happen we'd come up with a way to communicate across the facility. We had these 5x5 grids of letters, no "K", where 11 on the grid was A, 15 was E, 55 was Z etc. They had these touchscreen commissary kiosks where you could order food. The quantity of each item allowed up to 4 digits, e.g. 9999. So that gives you two letters. 1121 = AF for instance. We'd start at the top, Beef Noodles, 1121. Chicken Noodles, 2412 etc and work through the menu. We shared our login IDs with each other. We'd place these huge orders into the cart but never checkout. Then we'd log in to each other's accts from our separate cell blocks multiple times a day, read our messages and write our replies. Got caught eventually, 10 days in the Hole. I FOIA'd their investigation and it was very amusing seeing the report from the facility "Intelligence Dept" trying to decode all the messages.

nextaccountic 6mo ago
> A friend and I got split up into different cell blocks because we were helping each other with litigation. Are they legally able to prevent inmates from helping the litigation of another? That's insane The US is not a free society
- gruez 6mo ago
  [flagged]
  - kdhaskjdhadjk 6mo ago
    [flagged]
  - nextaccountic 6mo ago

cjbgkagh 6mo ago

The average IQ of a prisoner is 90-95 which is a long way from 100.

Enginerrrd 6mo ago
Prison IQ is a very different distribution. As I recall, the top 2% IQ of the general population makes up something like 20% of the prison population. You also have quite a few at the other end. The gifted are more over represented in prison then black males, however, most of those gifted are themselves minorities.
- cjbgkagh 6mo ago
  I’ll have to see some evidence on that, in my search it’s basically a normal bell curve shifted 8 pts down. The idea that 130+ IQ individuals make up 1/5th of the prison population does not pass the sniff test, that would be a crazy statistical aberration. In my search I found reports that 130+ IQ individuals only represent less than 0.4% of the prison population.
LAC-Tech 6mo ago
Is the average IQ of the US still 100?
- cjbgkagh 6mo ago
  Roughly yes, it is declining. The Flynn effect was just smart people having kids later which has now normalized and reversed (with smart people having fewer kids).
- throwawaymobule 6mo ago
  Isn't it always 100, by definition?
  - LAC-Tech 6mo ago
    I dont think IQ is based on american adults.

red-iron-pine 6mo ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_childhood_experiences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_childhood_experiences each ACE you experience ups the likelihood of all sorts of negative outcomes, with crime and addiction being very common. strong linkages to bad health outcomes, too.

mothballed 6mo ago
I wonder if there are any benefits of the adaptations made by those with higher ACE scores. Surely the adaptations we've evolved to make can't be entirely maladaptive. Here's one Emotional abuse: verbal threats, swearing at, insulting, or humiliating a child.[1][3] I'm trying to imagine what someone would be like if they reached 18 without ever having been "sworn at, insulted, or humiliated." Given this is one of the gentlest ways of correcting anti-social behavior, I can only imagine such person would be a maladapted nightmare.
- red-iron-pine 6mo ago
  resilience is talked about in the wiki article. there are strategies that can be taught to increase resilience, and sometimes that may include some tough love. but there are differences between some tough love to build character vs. years of emotional and verbal abuse. one of the big kids calling you a loser on the playground is not ACE; your mom telling you're worthless and she hates you and you should have never been born for most of your childhood is. put another way, 8 weeks of military boot camp teaches you to handle some of the stresses you might encounter; it builds resilience. but 18 years of it would create someone deeply screwed up.