11 ms·

Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

189 points by frank_boyd 13y ago

INTPenis 13y ago
Minor drug offenders are more often fined than jailed. A friend got caught in his apartment with a grow op, drying cannabis, illegal mushrooms, other drugs and he ended up serving no time at all. His time will be financial, he will have to pay off his debt to society literally instead of being incarcerated.
- Sharlin 13y ago
  AFAIK that's what happens in the US too -- if you happen to be white.
  - sschueller 13y ago
    and/or wealthy
  - eliasmacpherson 13y ago
    I have a friend, he happens to be white: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttUvsrcxKmI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttUvsrcxKmI
  - Dirlewanger 13y ago
    Cut the bullshit, guy. An offense like the guy described would land anyone doing time anywhere in the US, first offense or not.
- tluyben2 13y ago
  I think that's the same in a lot of EU countries. Too many people think those kind of drugs should be legalized anyway, so if the grow operation is not too large (10 instead of 1000 plants for instance), they won't do too much. Which I think is a good thing.
- marvin 13y ago
  What sort of debt is that? It's well and good if it is something which has been approved by the lawmakers, courts and population, but I am skeptical of making offenders pay very large fines. In effect, it turns into a (potentially lifelong) punishment. See e.g. the piratebay founders, none of which will ever be able to own property or any assets at all, seeing as even the interest payments on the damages they owe are more than the average salary. Sentencing someone to lifelong economic slavery is not a good thing in my book. It is a very, very harsh punishment. In effect, the piratebay founders have been sentenced to exile.
  - INTPenis 13y ago
    I don't know, and I'm not saying it's a good thing. All I can say for sure is that I don't want to see people jailed for all drug offences.
draugadrotten 13y ago
Beware of the political spin! Note that while the number of inmates plummets, the number of crimes committed is higher than ever. This is a failure of the police and the justice system and not a success story. Nearly 95 percent of violent crimes and robberies committed in Sweden go unsolved, and an individual police officer solves an average of three crimes per year. http://www.thelocal.se/20081103/15412 http://www.thelocal.se/20081103/15412
- csmuk 13y ago
  Sounds like Nottingham in the UK's bullshit crime statistics. "Arrests fallen! Crime rates lower than ever!" Actually people just do it vigilante style or don't bother reporting it because the police are fucking useless. I mean I caught a person breaking into my car, had photos of the person doing it, the car was covered in finger prints, they arrived in another stolen car with plates that were photographed, left their tools in the car when disturbed and the police said they found "no evidence". Was resolved for a small fee by a private "individual" who knew who they were.
  - draugadrotten 13y ago
    To be fair, the supreme court have also taken on itself to change the sentencing. The lack of inmates could be because of a change in 2010. [Edit: the effects of which, are seen now] Most inmates serving 10+ years in Swedish prisons are drug related cases. In 2010, the Swedish supreme court decided to dramatically change the policy regarding punishment for drug trafficking. What was previously a 14-year prison sentence suddenly became a 4 year crime. [Update: Prisoners sentenced in 2010 would previosly have been staying in prison for 10+ years but after the change they are now released in 2013 for good behaviour.] http://translate.google.se/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=sv&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fokus.se%2F2011%2F09%2Fstraffrabatt-i-knarkdomar%2F&act=url http://translate.google.se/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev...
    - gnerd 13y ago
      Also important to note is in Sweden there is no drug scheduling system like there would be in the Anglo countries. If one were to sell or move a lot of cannabis, it would be the same as selling or moving a lot or heroin or crystal meth. For small amounts of anything, there are no custodial sentences but the fine will be about half of your monthly salary (or approximately £50 if you have no job). I have heard anecdotal cases of houses/flats being raided on nothing more than simple suspicion because someone seemed sleepy or had red eyes.
seivan 13y ago
Another bullshit article. Crime in Sweden is insane, I don't feel safe anymore. We barely jail anyone for crimes, it's always fines and community bullshit service when it should be prison.
- berrypicker 13y ago
  A lot of people will find this offensive, but it's mostly because of immigration. Sweden has a one of the most liberal immigration policies in Europe, with more and more immigrants coming in every year, and crime is increasing relatively fast. It's not just correlation: serious crime (violence, theft) is overrepresented in immigrant groups, especially African and Asian immigrants, who are also less likely to serve prison sentences. There are statistics available for all these claims but I'll probably just be labelled a racist and ignored so I won't bother finding them.
  - touzen 13y ago
    You are being racist. What you're saying is that immigrants are somehow more inclined to commit crimes simply because they're immigrants. That _is_ a racist statement and you're also ignoring the real reason. The reason crime is increasing is that Sweden has become a more unequal and segregated society. Immigrants have been hit harder by this development because of, for example, discrimination on the job market. So basically you should stop complaining about the immigration policy and start demanding equality.
    - berrypicker 13y ago
      Enforcing equality has historically shown to have the opposite effect. Thomas Sowell, an African American (discrimination is more prevalent in the states) has written extensively about this, as have many others regarding quotas and other forms of forced 'equality'. So no, I won't demand equality, also because I believe in the fact that employers should have the freedom to hire whoever they want without state regulation. I really don't like this mentality of entitlement, and the excusing of any negative aspects of poorer groups on the richer. Interestingly this behaviour is more passionate in the middle classes than from people who are actually living in poverty. Ted Kaczynski talks about this.
jhomhenvhisst 13y ago
Murders are down 50% from 1990s, and the number of victims of street violence is down 30% the last 5 years. But these numbers are not unique for Sweden. The one type of violence that is up is for organized crime. http://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/antalet-mord-halverat-sedan-90-talet/ http://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/antalet-mord-halverat-sedan... (list of references in swedish) But yes, we have a very ineffective police force, everyone knows this. We have more police personnel then ever (huge increase the last years). But solved crimes are less, or the same. Note also that we can't use self defense like in the US. It is impossible to get any kind of license for pepper spray, taser (cops not allowed either), guns, anything you can defend yourself with. Makes it easy to be a criminal in Sweden.
- willvarfar 13y ago
  Do you think that an armed general population would decrease violence and your risk of receiving it?
- jeltz 13y ago
  > Makes it easy to be a criminal in Sweden. But apparently not easy enough for to actually encourage people to commit crimes.
darkbot 13y ago
No major Swedish news site is covering this. Interesting.
- Gojja 13y ago
  But: http://www.fokus.se/issues/2013-43/ http://www.fokus.se/issues/2013-43/
- jnordgren 13y ago
  http://www.dn.se/debatt/antalet-fangar-ar-nu-sa-lagt-att-vi-tvingas-stanga-fangelser/ http://www.dn.se/debatt/antalet-fangar-ar-nu-sa-lagt-att-vi-... More likely the guardian is lagging a few days behind.
chx 13y ago
> the five countries with the highest prison population are the US, China, Russia, Brazil and India. Blimey, who'd have thought the countries with some of the highest population will have the most inmates. Then it continues with the per capita numbers which are a much better comparison but conveniently leaves out the per capita number for Sweden which according to the numbers in the articles is around 50 -- and India is 30! Not a nice/relevant comparison. According to Wikipedia, apparently based on the same list just at a different rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcerat... India is fact one of the lowest per capita.
Gojja 13y ago
It´s the supreme court that is not using the whole punishment scale and indirectly emptying the prisons. For Sweds: http://www.fokus.se/issues/2013-43/ http://www.fokus.se/issues/2013-43/
ibsathish 13y ago
This is a pure political gimmick to project their country as one of the safest/crime-free countries. As many have said here, Police is run by the Government and they have the right to manipulate the data. As a general statistic, if you google it, you'll know the crime rate has been increasing in the last few years. They either fell into dumb ears or they make up by letting the criminals out. What's the point?
- hobbe80 13y ago
  You seem to have a very loose understanding of how the Swedish society works. The Police is not "run by the Government" - it's role in the Swedish society is directed by Polislagen (The Police Law). The Government directs (as it does with all governmental departments) Rikspolisstyrelsen (The National Police Board) via broad (and public) assignments and budgets. The Government (or the Police) have of course no right to manipulate the data - in Sweden more or less all data is publicly available, and manipulation of crime statistics would be something very noteworthy (and likely to cause a big scandal). And finally, if you google it, you'll know that crime rates have been decreasing in the last few years (few years meaning 2-3, and looking at all categories of crimes). Over a 10 year period, some categories of crimes have risen (at least the number of reported crimes have risen), and others, like homicide have markedly declined.
  - ibsathish 13y ago
    Totally agree and buy your points. But the point of downsizing the number of jails is what concerns me. Forget crimes in a larger scale or others like homicide, but minor crimes which are still punishable offenses would be in the rise as more and more the mankind evolves, crimes in any country would also evolve. Obviously, so does the legal system but people are smart enough to find loopholes and find a way to do.
- jeltz 13y ago
  Almost all of the increase in reported crimes is due to a few specific crimes being reported more now and population growth. Most violent crimes have been decreasing and when asking youths in surveys much fewer admit having participated in crimes compared to when I was the same age.
yesplorer 13y ago
China exceeds the Unites states by more than 1 billion people in terms of population yet the US jail more people than China?! This seems shocking to say the least.(at least to me) Yet the US is supposed to be less of a 'policed state' than China.
- vasilipupkin 13y ago
  Have you considered the possibility that higher per capita numbers of jailed people may reflect police officers doing a better job? In China, it may be easier for example to bribe the police or the judge and avoid jail.
  - JackC 13y ago
    That's really not what's going on here. I mean, yes, the US probably has better police officers than China. But the real reason we have higher per capita numbers than anyone else (with the possible exception of North Korea) is not that we (and possibly North Korea) have the world's best police officers. It's that we quadrupled our prison population over the last thirty years (partly by increasing incarceration for drug crimes by 1200%) while the rest of the world ... didn't. I mean, look at the numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera... - If you exclude some sub-100K-population countries that probably have weird statistics, the country with the next highest incarceration rate is Cuba, with only 75% the incarceration rate of the US. That's the _next highest_. - Russia has 67% of our incarceration rate. That's the highest large country other than the US. - There are only 21 countries that have even half of our incarceration rate, and let's say they're not the ones I think of as having the highest standard of living in the world. - Looking at the western nations that the US traditionally compares itself to (depending who you think that is), the highest are probably Spain, England and Wales at 20% of our incarceration rate. Germany is at 11%. France is at 14%. - In North America, Canada is at 16% of our incarceration rate. Mexico is at 29%. In other words, we could let out _three out of four prisoners in the United States_, and we would still be locking up more people than any of the nations we consider our peers in terms of wealth, democracy, civil rights, etc. Given the billions of dollars involved and the millions of lives destroyed and the decades this has been going on, we must by now have some pretty good evidence that our extraordinary, unprecedented strategy is better than the alternative, right? We're applying four times the average dose -- there must be a measurable effect by now. Right?
davidw 13y ago
Meanwhile, fascinating, non-political articles by and for hackers like this one are going more or less unnoticed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6691330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6691330
tokenadult 13y ago
I was glad to see that the recent article kindly submitted here gives the inmate count for Sweden, and Sweden's population. "According to official data, the Swedish prison population has dropped by nearly a sixth since it peaked at 5,722 in 2004. In 2012, there were 4,852 people in prison in Sweden, out of a population of 9.5 million." So I looked up my home state of Minnesota's inmate count and population for a rough comparison. "State corrections officials are quick to point out that Minnesota’s incarceration rate is the second lowest in the nation and to note how favorably Minnesota compares with our neighbor to the east. As of July 1, Minnesota had a prison population of 9,772 and a prison budget of $457 million a year. In contrast, Wisconsin has a prison population of about 23,000 and a prison budget of $1.2 billion."[1] Minnesota has a population of 5.379 million. In general, the state prison population in the United States is declining,[2] with Maine currently being the state with the lowest rate of incarceration, and Minnesota's recently fluctuating rate being the second-lowest. Some states have much higher rates of incarceration, so the overall United States rate is high. As the article submitted here suggests, and as the articles I'm linking here suggest too, all over the world it can reduce incarceration rates to not punish minor drug offenses with incarceration. A determinate sentencing system that emphasizes severity of crimes like Minnesota's[3] keeps first-time, nonviolent offenders out of prison and reserves prison for repeat offenders with known history of violent offenses. How does Minnesota's system work for me as a member of the public? I can walk all over my neighborhood feeling perfectly safe, and even my children can freely go out in public, walking for a radius of a mile or biking for a radius of four or five miles in any direction, without risk or fear. [1] http://www.minnpost.com/politics-policy/2013/08/how-minnesota-can-reduce-its-prison-population http://www.minnpost.com/politics-policy/2013/08/how-minnesot... [2] http://www.startribune.com/local/216949031.html http://www.startribune.com/local/216949031.html [3] http://mn.gov/sentencing-guidelines/images/2013%2520Guidelines.pdf http://mn.gov/sentencing-guidelines/images/2013%2520Guidelin...
- drivingmissm 13y ago
  Interestingly Minnesota has the largest population of Swedish descendents in the US.
  - 13y ago
ffrryuu 13y ago
You won't be able to do this if the prison are privately run, they need their profits!
willyt 13y ago
Safety is not the same as feeling safe. In Britain, about 10-15 years ago, they changed all the emergency services sirens to the same sound as the police have always used. You used to be able to tell the difference between an ambulance, a fire engine and a police car from the sound, now you can't. Also, these days a typical emergency medical response consists of 2 vehicles, a mobile ER doctor followed up by an ambulance. So my point is that in a densely populated area, like London, it now sounds like the police are all over the place all the time. Actually it's usually a medical response to an elderly person having a fall or heart problems or such like but, because they all sound like police, people assume the worst. If I were a politician and I wanted to introduce a rational and humane policy for treating the problem of criminality, like they have in Norway, the first thing I would do is change the sirens for all new fire and ambulance vehicle purchases so you can tell the difference from police. Then seed the media with the idea that there are less police sirens than there used to be. People would think crime had dropped precipitously and your policy would feel like it was a success as well as actually being a success.

189 points by frank_boyd 13y ago

Minor drug offenders are more often fined than jailed. A friend got caught in his apartment with a grow op, drying cannabis, illegal mushrooms, other drugs and he ended up serving no time at all. His time will be financial, he will have to pay off his debt to society literally instead of being incarcerated.

Sharlin 13y ago
AFAIK that's what happens in the US too -- if you happen to be white.
- sschueller 13y ago
  and/or wealthy
- eliasmacpherson 13y ago
  I have a friend, he happens to be white: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttUvsrcxKmI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttUvsrcxKmI
- Dirlewanger 13y ago
  Cut the bullshit, guy. An offense like the guy described would land anyone doing time anywhere in the US, first offense or not.
tluyben2 13y ago
I think that's the same in a lot of EU countries. Too many people think those kind of drugs should be legalized anyway, so if the grow operation is not too large (10 instead of 1000 plants for instance), they won't do too much. Which I think is a good thing.
marvin 13y ago
What sort of debt is that? It's well and good if it is something which has been approved by the lawmakers, courts and population, but I am skeptical of making offenders pay very large fines. In effect, it turns into a (potentially lifelong) punishment. See e.g. the piratebay founders, none of which will ever be able to own property or any assets at all, seeing as even the interest payments on the damages they owe are more than the average salary. Sentencing someone to lifelong economic slavery is not a good thing in my book. It is a very, very harsh punishment. In effect, the piratebay founders have been sentenced to exile.
- INTPenis 13y ago
  I don't know, and I'm not saying it's a good thing. All I can say for sure is that I don't want to see people jailed for all drug offences.

draugadrotten 13y ago

Beware of the political spin! Note that while the number of inmates plummets, the number of crimes committed is higher than ever. This is a failure of the police and the justice system and not a success story. Nearly 95 percent of violent crimes and robberies committed in Sweden go unsolved, and an individual police officer solves an average of three crimes per year. http://www.thelocal.se/20081103/15412 http://www.thelocal.se/20081103/15412

csmuk 13y ago
Sounds like Nottingham in the UK's bullshit crime statistics. "Arrests fallen! Crime rates lower than ever!" Actually people just do it vigilante style or don't bother reporting it because the police are fucking useless. I mean I caught a person breaking into my car, had photos of the person doing it, the car was covered in finger prints, they arrived in another stolen car with plates that were photographed, left their tools in the car when disturbed and the police said they found "no evidence". Was resolved for a small fee by a private "individual" who knew who they were.
- draugadrotten 13y ago
  To be fair, the supreme court have also taken on itself to change the sentencing. The lack of inmates could be because of a change in 2010. [Edit: the effects of which, are seen now] Most inmates serving 10+ years in Swedish prisons are drug related cases. In 2010, the Swedish supreme court decided to dramatically change the policy regarding punishment for drug trafficking. What was previously a 14-year prison sentence suddenly became a 4 year crime. [Update: Prisoners sentenced in 2010 would previosly have been staying in prison for 10+ years but after the change they are now released in 2013 for good behaviour.] http://translate.google.se/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=sv&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fokus.se%2F2011%2F09%2Fstraffrabatt-i-knarkdomar%2F&act=url http://translate.google.se/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev...
  - gnerd 13y ago
    Also important to note is in Sweden there is no drug scheduling system like there would be in the Anglo countries. If one were to sell or move a lot of cannabis, it would be the same as selling or moving a lot or heroin or crystal meth. For small amounts of anything, there are no custodial sentences but the fine will be about half of your monthly salary (or approximately £50 if you have no job). I have heard anecdotal cases of houses/flats being raided on nothing more than simple suspicion because someone seemed sleepy or had red eyes.

seivan 13y ago

Another bullshit article. Crime in Sweden is insane, I don't feel safe anymore. We barely jail anyone for crimes, it's always fines and community bullshit service when it should be prison.

berrypicker 13y ago
A lot of people will find this offensive, but it's mostly because of immigration. Sweden has a one of the most liberal immigration policies in Europe, with more and more immigrants coming in every year, and crime is increasing relatively fast. It's not just correlation: serious crime (violence, theft) is overrepresented in immigrant groups, especially African and Asian immigrants, who are also less likely to serve prison sentences. There are statistics available for all these claims but I'll probably just be labelled a racist and ignored so I won't bother finding them.
- touzen 13y ago
  You are being racist. What you're saying is that immigrants are somehow more inclined to commit crimes simply because they're immigrants. That _is_ a racist statement and you're also ignoring the real reason. The reason crime is increasing is that Sweden has become a more unequal and segregated society. Immigrants have been hit harder by this development because of, for example, discrimination on the job market. So basically you should stop complaining about the immigration policy and start demanding equality.
  - berrypicker 13y ago
    Enforcing equality has historically shown to have the opposite effect. Thomas Sowell, an African American (discrimination is more prevalent in the states) has written extensively about this, as have many others regarding quotas and other forms of forced 'equality'. So no, I won't demand equality, also because I believe in the fact that employers should have the freedom to hire whoever they want without state regulation. I really don't like this mentality of entitlement, and the excusing of any negative aspects of poorer groups on the richer. Interestingly this behaviour is more passionate in the middle classes than from people who are actually living in poverty. Ted Kaczynski talks about this.

jhomhenvhisst 13y ago

Murders are down 50% from 1990s, and the number of victims of street violence is down 30% the last 5 years. But these numbers are not unique for Sweden. The one type of violence that is up is for organized crime. http://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/antalet-mord-halverat-sedan-90-talet/ http://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/antalet-mord-halverat-sedan... (list of references in swedish) But yes, we have a very ineffective police force, everyone knows this. We have more police personnel then ever (huge increase the last years). But solved crimes are less, or the same. Note also that we can't use self defense like in the US. It is impossible to get any kind of license for pepper spray, taser (cops not allowed either), guns, anything you can defend yourself with. Makes it easy to be a criminal in Sweden.

willvarfar 13y ago
Do you think that an armed general population would decrease violence and your risk of receiving it?
jeltz 13y ago
> Makes it easy to be a criminal in Sweden. But apparently not easy enough for to actually encourage people to commit crimes.

darkbot 13y ago

No major Swedish news site is covering this. Interesting.

Gojja 13y ago
But: http://www.fokus.se/issues/2013-43/ http://www.fokus.se/issues/2013-43/
jnordgren 13y ago
http://www.dn.se/debatt/antalet-fangar-ar-nu-sa-lagt-att-vi-tvingas-stanga-fangelser/ http://www.dn.se/debatt/antalet-fangar-ar-nu-sa-lagt-att-vi-... More likely the guardian is lagging a few days behind.

chx 13y ago

> the five countries with the highest prison population are the US, China, Russia, Brazil and India. Blimey, who'd have thought the countries with some of the highest population will have the most inmates. Then it continues with the per capita numbers which are a much better comparison but conveniently leaves out the per capita number for Sweden which according to the numbers in the articles is around 50 -- and India is 30! Not a nice/relevant comparison. According to Wikipedia, apparently based on the same list just at a different rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcerat... India is fact one of the lowest per capita.

Gojja 13y ago

It´s the supreme court that is not using the whole punishment scale and indirectly emptying the prisons. For Sweds: http://www.fokus.se/issues/2013-43/ http://www.fokus.se/issues/2013-43/

ibsathish 13y ago

This is a pure political gimmick to project their country as one of the safest/crime-free countries. As many have said here, Police is run by the Government and they have the right to manipulate the data. As a general statistic, if you google it, you'll know the crime rate has been increasing in the last few years. They either fell into dumb ears or they make up by letting the criminals out. What's the point?

hobbe80 13y ago
You seem to have a very loose understanding of how the Swedish society works. The Police is not "run by the Government" - it's role in the Swedish society is directed by Polislagen (The Police Law). The Government directs (as it does with all governmental departments) Rikspolisstyrelsen (The National Police Board) via broad (and public) assignments and budgets. The Government (or the Police) have of course no right to manipulate the data - in Sweden more or less all data is publicly available, and manipulation of crime statistics would be something very noteworthy (and likely to cause a big scandal). And finally, if you google it, you'll know that crime rates have been decreasing in the last few years (few years meaning 2-3, and looking at all categories of crimes). Over a 10 year period, some categories of crimes have risen (at least the number of reported crimes have risen), and others, like homicide have markedly declined.
- ibsathish 13y ago
  Totally agree and buy your points. But the point of downsizing the number of jails is what concerns me. Forget crimes in a larger scale or others like homicide, but minor crimes which are still punishable offenses would be in the rise as more and more the mankind evolves, crimes in any country would also evolve. Obviously, so does the legal system but people are smart enough to find loopholes and find a way to do.
jeltz 13y ago
Almost all of the increase in reported crimes is due to a few specific crimes being reported more now and population growth. Most violent crimes have been decreasing and when asking youths in surveys much fewer admit having participated in crimes compared to when I was the same age.

yesplorer 13y ago

China exceeds the Unites states by more than 1 billion people in terms of population yet the US jail more people than China?! This seems shocking to say the least.(at least to me) Yet the US is supposed to be less of a 'policed state' than China.

vasilipupkin 13y ago
Have you considered the possibility that higher per capita numbers of jailed people may reflect police officers doing a better job? In China, it may be easier for example to bribe the police or the judge and avoid jail.
- JackC 13y ago
  That's really not what's going on here. I mean, yes, the US probably has better police officers than China. But the real reason we have higher per capita numbers than anyone else (with the possible exception of North Korea) is not that we (and possibly North Korea) have the world's best police officers. It's that we quadrupled our prison population over the last thirty years (partly by increasing incarceration for drug crimes by 1200%) while the rest of the world ... didn't. I mean, look at the numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera... - If you exclude some sub-100K-population countries that probably have weird statistics, the country with the next highest incarceration rate is Cuba, with only 75% the incarceration rate of the US. That's the _next highest_. - Russia has 67% of our incarceration rate. That's the highest large country other than the US. - There are only 21 countries that have even half of our incarceration rate, and let's say they're not the ones I think of as having the highest standard of living in the world. - Looking at the western nations that the US traditionally compares itself to (depending who you think that is), the highest are probably Spain, England and Wales at 20% of our incarceration rate. Germany is at 11%. France is at 14%. - In North America, Canada is at 16% of our incarceration rate. Mexico is at 29%. In other words, we could let out _three out of four prisoners in the United States_, and we would still be locking up more people than any of the nations we consider our peers in terms of wealth, democracy, civil rights, etc. Given the billions of dollars involved and the millions of lives destroyed and the decades this has been going on, we must by now have some pretty good evidence that our extraordinary, unprecedented strategy is better than the alternative, right? We're applying four times the average dose -- there must be a measurable effect by now. Right?

davidw 13y ago

Meanwhile, fascinating, non-political articles by and for hackers like this one are going more or less unnoticed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6691330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6691330

tokenadult 13y ago

I was glad to see that the recent article kindly submitted here gives the inmate count for Sweden, and Sweden's population. "According to official data, the Swedish prison population has dropped by nearly a sixth since it peaked at 5,722 in 2004. In 2012, there were 4,852 people in prison in Sweden, out of a population of 9.5 million." So I looked up my home state of Minnesota's inmate count and population for a rough comparison. "State corrections officials are quick to point out that Minnesota’s incarceration rate is the second lowest in the nation and to note how favorably Minnesota compares with our neighbor to the east. As of July 1, Minnesota had a prison population of 9,772 and a prison budget of $457 million a year. In contrast, Wisconsin has a prison population of about 23,000 and a prison budget of $1.2 billion."[1] Minnesota has a population of 5.379 million. In general, the state prison population in the United States is declining,[2] with Maine currently being the state with the lowest rate of incarceration, and Minnesota's recently fluctuating rate being the second-lowest. Some states have much higher rates of incarceration, so the overall United States rate is high. As the article submitted here suggests, and as the articles I'm linking here suggest too, all over the world it can reduce incarceration rates to not punish minor drug offenses with incarceration. A determinate sentencing system that emphasizes severity of crimes like Minnesota's[3] keeps first-time, nonviolent offenders out of prison and reserves prison for repeat offenders with known history of violent offenses. How does Minnesota's system work for me as a member of the public? I can walk all over my neighborhood feeling perfectly safe, and even my children can freely go out in public, walking for a radius of a mile or biking for a radius of four or five miles in any direction, without risk or fear. [1] http://www.minnpost.com/politics-policy/2013/08/how-minnesota-can-reduce-its-prison-population http://www.minnpost.com/politics-policy/2013/08/how-minnesot... [2] http://www.startribune.com/local/216949031.html http://www.startribune.com/local/216949031.html [3] http://mn.gov/sentencing-guidelines/images/2013%2520Guidelines.pdf http://mn.gov/sentencing-guidelines/images/2013%2520Guidelin...

drivingmissm 13y ago
Interestingly Minnesota has the largest population of Swedish descendents in the US.
- 13y ago

ffrryuu 13y ago

You won't be able to do this if the prison are privately run, they need their profits!

willyt 13y ago

Safety is not the same as feeling safe. In Britain, about 10-15 years ago, they changed all the emergency services sirens to the same sound as the police have always used. You used to be able to tell the difference between an ambulance, a fire engine and a police car from the sound, now you can't. Also, these days a typical emergency medical response consists of 2 vehicles, a mobile ER doctor followed up by an ambulance. So my point is that in a densely populated area, like London, it now sounds like the police are all over the place all the time. Actually it's usually a medical response to an elderly person having a fall or heart problems or such like but, because they all sound like police, people assume the worst. If I were a politician and I wanted to introduce a rational and humane policy for treating the problem of criminality, like they have in Norway, the first thing I would do is change the sirens for all new fire and ambulance vehicle purchases so you can tell the difference from police. Then seed the media with the idea that there are less police sirens than there used to be. People would think crime had dropped precipitously and your policy would feel like it was a success as well as actually being a success.