5 ms·
I'm having a hard time finding good comparable numbers, but you can see that total homicides (1993-2007) went from ~300 to ~260 in Australia http://www.aic.gov
by mynameishere 14y ago
I'm having a hard time finding good comparable numbers, but you can see that total homicides (1993-2007) went from ~300 to ~260 in Australia
http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/homicide.html http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/homicide.html
whereas the (per 100,000) homicide rate in the US went from 9.5 to 5.7
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0873729.html http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0873729.html
...if someone else wants to look up the population numbers and do the division, ok. But it's clear that the US's rate improved similarly or better than Australia's. Please try to keep in mind that the nytime's has a strident agenda.
ED: I didn't read the .AU text. Their numbers went from 1.9 per to 1.3 per.
- vacri 14y agoLies, damned lies, and statistics. The prison population in the same time in the US skyrocketed beyond belief.
- tsotha 14y agoThat doesn't make it wrong. There is a reason the public started to support stiffer sentences, after all - they believed (correctly, as it turns out) locking up criminals means you get less crime.
- mpweiher 14y agoExcept that crime rates dropped the same way in just about every other western country without harsher sentencing, and without locking up large sections of the population. Update: Thanks "lostlogin", fixed.
- tsotha 14y agoNot by the same amount, though.
- mpweiher 14y agoThey didn't have the chance to drop by the same amount, because they were much lower to begin with. And are still much lower. But drop they did. So what's the evidence again for higher incarceration rates and stiffer sentencing leading to lower crime?
- lostlogin 14y agoNot sure of your definition of western, but leave New Zealand out of it, 2nd highest incarceration rate in the world, and growing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Corrections_(New_Zealand) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Corrections_(New_...
- vacri 14y agoSecond highest in the world? NZ is 190/100k, a rate that puts it in 71st position: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcerat...
- lostlogin 14y agoNice catch. I didn't read carefully enough. 'Western world' being a key phrase. I got my stat from this statement "New Zealand has the second highest rate of imprisonment in the Western world.[12]" from here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Corrections_(New_Zealand)#cite_note-12 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Corrections_(New_...
- vacri 14y agoEven so, mpwieher's comment still stands to some degree. At a rate of 190, NZ is still around the same level as other Western countries which range from 70 to 150ish. It's nowhere near the proportion of people imprisoned by the US at 730. That's a pretty big dropoff between first and second place.
- vacri 14y agoSo... your reasoning is... that a skyrocketing prison population does indeed reduce crime significantly... and at the same time, gun laws in the US were mostly responsible for the reduction in crime drop? I mean, you're agreeing with me at the same time you're disagreeing with me, in a way that just doesn't make sense.
- tsotha 14y agoWhere did I say gun laws were responsible for the "reduction in crime drop [sic]"?
- lostlogin 14y agoas a percentage, the improvement isnt all that different, and going from terrible to bad is presumably easier than when rates are just poor to start with. That said, your data paints USA in a worse light than a brief skim read of Google does for me.