6 ms·

whatever the cause was, it happened The incarceration rate since the 1960s has remained virtually static; but the incarcerees are in prison, where previously t

by cstross 13y ago

whatever the cause was, it happened The incarceration rate since the 1960s has remained virtually static; but the incarcerees are in prison, where previously they would have been detained in mental asylums: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/saving-normal/201303/prison-or-treatment-the-mentally-ill http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/saving-normal/201303/pri... Also note the strong correlation between falling crime rates since 1970 and the removal of tetraethyl lead as an additive in gasoline: http://www.economist.com/blogs/theworldin2013/2013/01/lead-and-crime http://www.economist.com/blogs/theworldin2013/2013/01/lead-a... A punitive prison regime isn't going to cure the sick. What we need is to swing the focus onto mental health issues -- and yes, this may mean building new asylums, to replace the punishment regime of prisons with a medical/treatment oriented system -- and shrink the prison system and re-focus it on actual criminals rather than unfortunates who hear voices in their heads.

lifeisstillgood 13y ago
Huh? Lead causes crime?
- khuey 13y ago
  Uh, yeah. It's pretty widely accepted that lead-induced brain damage from tetraethyl lead fuel additives was a contributor to crime in the mid to late 20th century.
  - danielweber 13y ago
    It's a very decent theory, but don't confuse someone agreeing that spending money to reduce environmental lead is a good bet (where the standard of proof is not extremely strict, and that's a good thing) with someone saying that "lead causes crime." Just because Kevin Drum likes it doesn't make it "widely accepted." You oversell his theory. It's proven about as well as abortion reducing crime, which has good evidence behind it but is hardly a slam-dunk case.
- patrickmclaren 13y ago
  Correlates with, does not necessarily cause.
  - sanj 13y ago
    Agreed, but correlation across multiple countries across multiple time windows, indicate that we should pay attention to it. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0013935107000503 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0013935107...
  - mcherm 13y ago
    But it is difficult to imagine a mechanism where the lead could be caused by the crime and easy to imagine one where the crime is caused by the lead. A separate independent cause that affects crime and lead is easy to imagine, but if you control for location where people live, or lived when young (which is largely a measure of poverty) and still saw the correlation between lead and crime, then I would say that was quite strong evidence that lead poisoning (which is known to have mental effects) causes behavior patterns that lead to crime.
    - jrochkind1 13y ago
      One causing the other is not the only possibility. Maybe it's a complete coincidence. Or maybe (keeping in mind that somoene above suggested the correlation has been shown in different countries at different times) -- societies that work to reduce lead also tend to be societies that work on other social issues, and those other social issues reduce crime. So the lead is correlated to crime historically, even though neither causes the other directly. Now, i think the study showing lead/crime correlation is _awfully_ interesting, and I don't dismiss it. But "correlation does not prove causation" does not just mean "B could have caused A instead of A causing B." And this is important to understand in order to evaluate statistical findings properly. There are all sorts of things that can cause correlation rather than either A or B causing the other -- including things nobody's actually even thought of yet, but may still be what happened. And complete coincidence is always possible as well.
      - 13y ago
- rayiner 13y ago
  See: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-li.... Also, lead lowers IQ. Various estimates have been in the several point range, but at least one researcher has estimated an increase of 6 IQ points as a result of the lead ban: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/opinion/kristof-its-a-smart-smart-smart-world.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/opinion/kristof-its-a-smar....
  - dylangs1030 13y ago
    Do you have any sources that can quantify what 6 IQ points is for the average person? Is it a percent benefit (does it benefit someone who would have had a 90 IQ more than someone who would have had a 130 anyway) or absolute benefit (you can quantify an IQ point the same for everyone). I imagine it's the former, but I'm wondering if you have any other IQ-related sources.
- ufmace 13y ago
  From the reading I have done about it, in the 70s-80s or so, there was a huge crime wave that was expected to grow even worse in the 90s. Instead, crime rates fell off a cliff. I might have timeframe wrong, but that's the basic facts. Everybody involved has been trying to figure out why crime rates dropped so hard when they were expected to grow. There's a ton of proposed reasons, and not much in the way of solid proof behind any of them. Lead in the water is one of them, also legal abortion, drug market changes, gun law changes, and many others. Maybe it was really all one of them, maybe all of them played a part, maybe just a few. We'll probably never know for sure - it's not like you can perform experiments to really isolate one of those variables properly.
lesterbuck 13y ago
Putting people with mental problems in prison is shameful and a serious problem. But certainly you aren't claiming that black and brown people have more mental problems than white people?
- cstross 13y ago
  That's a very interesting question, maybe better phrased as "why would a white-dominated psychiatric profession diagnose more mental problems among underprivileged non-white people than among white people?" (Also worth noting: there's a strong correlation between cannabis (marijuana) use and schizophrenia. The drug warriors tend to get alarmed that this means cannabis use causes schizophrenia. But schizophrenics also tend to smoke tobacco, drink, and use other drugs. What if they're really self-medicating, and the cannabis correlation is there because smoking a joint makes the voices go away for a bit? I suspect the answer to this question is again down to cultural norms: privileged white folks determine the norms and set the laws, and this works against underprivileged/minority folks. Oh, and privileged white folks get to pay lawyers to either get them off drugs charges, or get them a lighter sentence. Hence their under-representation in prisons. Full disclosure: I am a privileged white person.)
- dylangs1030 13y ago
  This is something I'd be comfortable defending. Mental problems do not need to be inherent from birth; whereas minority groups are highly correlated with crime and low income as a result of American class divisions, at a glance, I can see several ways to argue that minorities are at least more susceptible to mental illness. This isn't ethnic so much as it is environmental living conditions in poverty. For one, you have malnutrition, which is an entire precursor to mental illness in of itself. Of course you can't reasonably argue that minorities have an inherent predisposition to mental illness (it'd be frankly racist, and without much evidence I believe), but in practice, they probably do have a predisposition to it over the course of their lifetimes from a statistical standpoint.
oijaf888 13y ago
> The incarceration rate since the 1960s has remained virtually static; but the incarcerees are in prison, where previously they would have been detained in mental asylums: Wait, you are telling me that in 1960s we had 1-2% of the population in prison or a mental asylum? Why do no other countries have near that rate?

by cstross 13y ago

lifeisstillgood 13y ago

Huh? Lead causes crime?

khuey 13y ago
Uh, yeah. It's pretty widely accepted that lead-induced brain damage from tetraethyl lead fuel additives was a contributor to crime in the mid to late 20th century.
- danielweber 13y ago
  It's a very decent theory, but don't confuse someone agreeing that spending money to reduce environmental lead is a good bet (where the standard of proof is not extremely strict, and that's a good thing) with someone saying that "lead causes crime." Just because Kevin Drum likes it doesn't make it "widely accepted." You oversell his theory. It's proven about as well as abortion reducing crime, which has good evidence behind it but is hardly a slam-dunk case.
patrickmclaren 13y ago
Correlates with, does not necessarily cause.
- sanj 13y ago
  Agreed, but correlation across multiple countries across multiple time windows, indicate that we should pay attention to it. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0013935107000503 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0013935107...
- mcherm 13y ago
  But it is difficult to imagine a mechanism where the lead could be caused by the crime and easy to imagine one where the crime is caused by the lead. A separate independent cause that affects crime and lead is easy to imagine, but if you control for location where people live, or lived when young (which is largely a measure of poverty) and still saw the correlation between lead and crime, then I would say that was quite strong evidence that lead poisoning (which is known to have mental effects) causes behavior patterns that lead to crime.
  - jrochkind1 13y ago
    One causing the other is not the only possibility. Maybe it's a complete coincidence. Or maybe (keeping in mind that somoene above suggested the correlation has been shown in different countries at different times) -- societies that work to reduce lead also tend to be societies that work on other social issues, and those other social issues reduce crime. So the lead is correlated to crime historically, even though neither causes the other directly. Now, i think the study showing lead/crime correlation is _awfully_ interesting, and I don't dismiss it. But "correlation does not prove causation" does not just mean "B could have caused A instead of A causing B." And this is important to understand in order to evaluate statistical findings properly. There are all sorts of things that can cause correlation rather than either A or B causing the other -- including things nobody's actually even thought of yet, but may still be what happened. And complete coincidence is always possible as well.
    - 13y ago
rayiner 13y ago
See: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-li.... Also, lead lowers IQ. Various estimates have been in the several point range, but at least one researcher has estimated an increase of 6 IQ points as a result of the lead ban: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/opinion/kristof-its-a-smart-smart-smart-world.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/opinion/kristof-its-a-smar....
- dylangs1030 13y ago
  Do you have any sources that can quantify what 6 IQ points is for the average person? Is it a percent benefit (does it benefit someone who would have had a 90 IQ more than someone who would have had a 130 anyway) or absolute benefit (you can quantify an IQ point the same for everyone). I imagine it's the former, but I'm wondering if you have any other IQ-related sources.
ufmace 13y ago
From the reading I have done about it, in the 70s-80s or so, there was a huge crime wave that was expected to grow even worse in the 90s. Instead, crime rates fell off a cliff. I might have timeframe wrong, but that's the basic facts. Everybody involved has been trying to figure out why crime rates dropped so hard when they were expected to grow. There's a ton of proposed reasons, and not much in the way of solid proof behind any of them. Lead in the water is one of them, also legal abortion, drug market changes, gun law changes, and many others. Maybe it was really all one of them, maybe all of them played a part, maybe just a few. We'll probably never know for sure - it's not like you can perform experiments to really isolate one of those variables properly.

lesterbuck 13y ago

Putting people with mental problems in prison is shameful and a serious problem. But certainly you aren't claiming that black and brown people have more mental problems than white people?

cstross 13y ago
That's a very interesting question, maybe better phrased as "why would a white-dominated psychiatric profession diagnose more mental problems among underprivileged non-white people than among white people?" (Also worth noting: there's a strong correlation between cannabis (marijuana) use and schizophrenia. The drug warriors tend to get alarmed that this means cannabis use causes schizophrenia. But schizophrenics also tend to smoke tobacco, drink, and use other drugs. What if they're really self-medicating, and the cannabis correlation is there because smoking a joint makes the voices go away for a bit? I suspect the answer to this question is again down to cultural norms: privileged white folks determine the norms and set the laws, and this works against underprivileged/minority folks. Oh, and privileged white folks get to pay lawyers to either get them off drugs charges, or get them a lighter sentence. Hence their under-representation in prisons. Full disclosure: I am a privileged white person.)
dylangs1030 13y ago
This is something I'd be comfortable defending. Mental problems do not need to be inherent from birth; whereas minority groups are highly correlated with crime and low income as a result of American class divisions, at a glance, I can see several ways to argue that minorities are at least more susceptible to mental illness. This isn't ethnic so much as it is environmental living conditions in poverty. For one, you have malnutrition, which is an entire precursor to mental illness in of itself. Of course you can't reasonably argue that minorities have an inherent predisposition to mental illness (it'd be frankly racist, and without much evidence I believe), but in practice, they probably do have a predisposition to it over the course of their lifetimes from a statistical standpoint.

oijaf888 13y ago

> The incarceration rate since the 1960s has remained virtually static; but the incarcerees are in prison, where previously they would have been detained in mental asylums: Wait, you are telling me that in 1960s we had 1-2% of the population in prison or a mental asylum? Why do no other countries have near that rate?