One Percent of All American Adults are Incarcerated

It also puts the debate about comparisons between US and European unemployment rates and welfare levels into context

There is an interesting graph at Volokh showing the prison + mental institution rate from 1934 to the present. You can clearly see the changes in the mental institutionalization rules which took place in the 1970s, and it appears that the prison system has picked almost all of them up.

Which isn’t a great thing. But the good news (I think) from that graph is that the most fruitful area of research to reduce the incarceration rate may be found in how to deal with and follow up on people who would have been incarcerated mental patients pre-1970.

Also, since the number of silly drug incarcerations is astronomical, it suggests that if we could get the mental patient problem under control (not that I’ll say it is super-likely) we might have a non-drug prison population which is lower than historical norms.

People who drop out of high school can either work at deadend jobs and pray they scrape by, or else become criminals.

Given the lack of respect for work and honesty in the U.S., as compared to respect for money, one would have to be pretty saintly to avoid the temptation.

Yeah, if we ever spent a fraction of what we spend on jails on more effective and less horribly unpleasant medications for mental disease, crime not related to bongs or stealing money from one’s employer would mostly disappear.

someguy-

Hey, maybe they can just go to graduate school and get a fellowship to study. Or maybe they can just ‘not go to jail.’ Not going to jail will do wonders and will prevent them from going to jail.

RICKM,

Getting a GED really is quite a lot easier and much less expensive than going to grad school.

Not going to Jail would be a good strategy.

Surely there is some truth in what Anderson said.

But

Here –

http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#b51-0000

50 hours a week at 10 – 15 an hour lets say 12.50 an hour probably pays better than crime.

When you factor in the cost of Jail, it doesn’t seem like only saints, should be sticking to dead end jobs.

“I do suspect that, say, tripling the minimum wage would go a long way to reducing crime.”

The minimum wage here in Michigan is $7.40 an hour. Three times that amounts to a bit over $46,000 a year. That’s the kind of pay you get in many skilled professions only after years of experience and seniority.

Tripling the minimum wage would dramatically INCREASE crime, by rendering the majority of the population legally unemployable, since they simply wouldn’t be able to do anything remotely worth the least they could legally be paid. The economy would almost immediately become dependent on black market labor, with numerous detrimental consequences.

As a libertarian, I recognize that a frighteningly large proportion of our prison population are locked away for acts which are, frankly, none of the government’s god damn business. Even more are imprisoned for acts which are legitimately outlawed, but only happened as a consequence of those illegitimate laws. It’s a moral outrage.

Still… even in the worst neighborhoods, the great majority of people somehow manage to refrain from committing these crimes, whether or not making them crimes was a legitimate act of state power. You simply can’t ignore the extent to which the imprisoned, regardless of their racial demographics, are there as a consequence of their own choices.

That’s the elephant in the room, when people start obsessing about those demographics. Those people locked themselves away, they didn’t have to commit those crimes. Most people in exactly the same circumstances didn’t.

So, while we desperately need to clear the statute books of victimless ‘crimes’, we must also confront the cultural factors that predispose some groups to chose crime as a way of life. Because chose it they do.

That wouldn’t be a reasonable thing to do, there are multiple factors at work here. I’m simply urging that we not ignore one of them, the cultural predisposition to violate laws.

I’m simply urging that we not ignore one of them, the cultural predisposition to violate laws.

That’s what dictators called dissidents.

I suspect this is a vast oversimplification.

Unskilled entry level jobs that you can get with a GED tend to pay more like $8-9 bucks an hour.

And 50 hours a week? Employers want people’s schedules to be as flexible as possible, so it’s more likely that you’re on call for 80 hours a week and end up working 30 hours a week.

Kieran–it’s clear that you believe that too many people are in prison in America today. I’m curious, though–do you believe that there was ever a time when there were too few people in prison in America? Say, during the early 1970s, when violent crime rates were more than double what they are today, and incarceration rates much lower? Or do you believe that less incarceration is always better, irrespective of its effect on crime rates (possibly because you believe it has no such effect)?

This is a serious question–I’m open to arguments that today’s incarceration rates are excessive. I’d just like to know whether those arguments are based on the idea that incarceration itself is the problem, or the idea that incarceration has increased beyond its ability to provide sufficient marginal benefit.

the cultural predisposition to violate laws.

I am thinking of instituting a £5 book token prize for “Euphemism of the Week”, and that one would surely be a front runner.

The trouble here is that there is a big industrial complex grown up around these prisons. When you’ve created an infrastructure that size, you’ve created a powerful producer interest in favour of maintaining and expanding it. That’s what is going to make the politics difficult for reducing this population.

Two words: Malcolm X’s parents:

Earl Little was a member of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and a supporter of Marcus Garvey. This got him into trouble with the Ku Klux Klan and after the family were threatened they moved to Lansing, Michigan. Little continued to make speeches in favour of UNIA and in 1929 the family house was burned down by members of the Black Legion.
In 1931 Little was found dead by a streetcar railway track. Although no one was convicted of the crime it was generally believed that Little had been murdered by the Black Legionnaires. Malcolm’s mother never recovered from her husband’s death and in 1937 was sent to the State Mental Hospital at Kalamazoo, where she stayed for the next twenty-six years.

Crime and mental illness, there you have it.
Happy last day of Black History Month.

abb1 – you desperately need Econ 101

Good jobs tend to be skilled jobs.
People earning minimum wage tend not to have skills.

Prices might go up 50% or so on average.
That’s OK is it?
In any event they won’t, as people will lose jobs to automation, as you say.

You have created a perfect recipe for high unemployment and higher crime.
Well done.

cjcjc, while abb1 might indeed think a bit harder about the economics of his plans, I think you are missing a point too: automation can increase the productivity of low-skilled people, and an increase in minimum wage is a strong reason to invest in this area of automation.

ajay – play the ball

great zamfir – good point

abb1 – you mean that the minimum *market rate* is about $18, as there is no statutory minimum in Switzerland is there?

How ironic it must be for you that a (relatively) small government, free-market economy such as Switzerland has been so successful that even the lowest paid earn $18 an hour.

What a great advert for capitalism.
Go Switzerland!

cjcjc, there is no minimum in Switzerland, they negotiate and set wage scales on the cantonal and local levels.

How ironic it must be for you…

Why, I like de-centralized government. And it’s not that small, it’s just bigger on the local level and much smaller on the federal level. But that’s irrelevant to the incarceration thing. Or maybe not.

Unfortunately, brett, that “politically loaded fiction” is what labour productivity means – production per worker. Don’t let your anti-union beliefs get in the way.

cjcjc, Switzerland is only relatively small government – its tax take is 30% of GDP, just under Ireland and significantly higher than the US. Neither have $18 minimum wages. Also, you’re forgetting to adjust for PPP. $18 in Geneva may not buy as much as it would in Kentucky. But maybe PPP is only covered in Econ 201.

You offer no evidence – none – that tripling minimum wage (presumably federal, not state – $5.85, not $7.40) would raise the price of everything by 50%, and I am inclined to doubt it, very strongly.

brett bellmore: “The idea that a guy packing boxes in front of a half million dollars of capital equipment is “producing” the entire output of that line is a politically loaded fiction.”

Property rights are a politically loaded fiction. This is the part you libertarians simply don’t understand; these things do not exist as Platonic abstractions in a state of nature.

If we as a society allow all the benefits of productivity gains to accrue to rich capitalists, we create a situation where the majority of workers have no stake in supporting such gains, and may indeed have good reason to oppose them. That’s what the Luddite movement was all about. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to see a repeat of that. I’d rather that everyone had a stake in continued growth.

By decoupling productivity from the well-being of the average worker, we are setting ourselves up for the same kind of economic collapse that the USSR suffered. And for the same reason: exaltation of an abstract ideology over the empirical facts on the ground.

“Contrasts compares” s/b either one or the other, obviously.

And the incarceration rates in European countries in my above post are for those countries’ populations as a whole.

So what choice to we have to conclude that either white Americans like Brett and myself share the cultural deficiencies of our black counterparts, although to a lesser extent, or that we suffer from our own distinct set of deficiencies.

None, I’d say. Isn’t the notion that Americans as a whole are culturally predisposed to violence, compared with the inhabitants of other developed countries, pretty much a universally accepted opinion? The statistics certainly seem to bear it out…

someguy, you clearly have zero experience with the current unskilled job market or, really, life. Are you a teenager? The estimates you give for what low-wage earners could “probably” earn in a year or two are crazy — and if you think $9/hr “isn’t poverty”, I’d like to see you live on it. $7.50 is entry level in many places, with a 25 cent raise after a year.

The idea that a guy packing boxes in front of a half million dollars of capital equipment is “producing” the entire output of that line is a politically loaded fiction

I wonder how Brett plans on discriminating b/w this guy and me (I’m an engineer). I’m extremely well compensated, but I am dependent on billions of dollars worth of equipment for my work to be valuable (I design integrated circuits). Without it, my work is comletely worthless. Maybe it requires moving beyond econ 101 to figure out the difference.

We see that it’s not just non-white people who need locking up thanks to their unfortunate genes, but the wrong kinds of “white” folks too, for Brett. Likely it’s the result of miscegenation, plus of course the innate disadvantages of relative swarthiness.

guys, go watch The Wire, it’s all there

Nope, I didn’t do it right, only the I had a partner and no kids was supposed to be bold.

The differential in the rate of white incarceration in America and Europe will be in part due to the racial classification of non-European groups as white. Hispanics. Middle-Easterners, North Africans and mixed-race are often classified as such – the depressing reason being, I suppose, that the authorities shy away from the dreaded notion of European-Caucasian purity.

This is racism, of course – as is the wierd desire to lay the blame for blacks rates of violence and criminality in general at the door of “white oppression”.

There’s an old but true blog-post on the classification problem here.

I should hope so, my “dodgy racial politics” is mostly a matter of people who don’t like my politics hammering it’s square peg into the round, “racist politics” hole. No matter how carefully I write, people end up reading what they want to, in far too many cases.

Oh, sad. I thought CTers were intellectually able. But what we have here is the usual left-of-centre incapacity to process facts – in this case the misclassification of non-European felons as “whites” – which counter their holy writ.

Look, if you base your discussion upon falsehood and said falsehood is pointed out, accept the fact in good grace. Don’t shoot, or in this case smear, the messenger. It’s wrong to dehumanise. Or is that lesson only for preaching at those you dislike?

Isn’t the notion that Americans as a whole are culturally predisposed to violence, compared with the inhabitants of other developed countries, pretty much a universally accepted opinion? The statistics certainly seem to bear it out…

It may be “universally accepted” but that doesn’t make it true. Possibly two million Americans died violently in the 20th Century, while upwards of a hundred million Europeans did.

“These are fine distinctions perhaps lost on brett and guessedworker.”

You see, this is what I meant when I said that “No matter how carefully I write, people end up reading what they want to, in far too many cases.” Let’s go back up to that statement of mine:

““Blacks have the misfortune to be members, in larger proportion, of some of the worst cultures in this country””

Since this seems to have gone right over your head, by “in larger proportion”, I did NOT mean, “without exception”. Got that?

It may be “universally accepted” but that doesn’t make it true. Possibly two million Americans died violently in the 20th Century, while upwards of a hundred million Europeans did.

Fair enough–insert the word “individual” before violence.

Dan Simon

Do you reckon there’s a plausible case to be made that incarceration rates in Europe are too high?

It also strikes me as sadly funny how people in the U.S. say it is the “freest” country in the world when it has the one of the largest inmate populations per capita.

The largest, actually.

The point is, Brett, that the USA beat out a large number of countries which are not just prison camps with flags.

Brett: “You see, this is what I meant when I said that “No matter how carefully I write, people end up reading what they want to, in far too many cases.” Let’s go back up to that statement of mine:”

You see, some of us at CT have what are called ‘memories’. In particular, we remember your previous posts, and have a very good idea of what you are.

You lost the benefit of the doubt a long, long time ago.

“No, Brett, c’mon. Not being able to participate in anti-government political activity is a far cry from being incarcerated.”

Not being able to leave, OTOH, is not.

Well, Barry, you remember what you read into my previous posts, anyway. Just as you’ll remember this exchange as me claiming all blacks were members of a violent culture, when all I said was that disproportionate numbers of them were. I find the incapacity/unwillingness of some here to notice when reality diverges from their intellectual prejudices rather annoying.

And, yeah, I agree, our incarceration rate is outrageous. It’s pretty pathetic when you have to point to the existence of police states to prove that your country isn’t really the worst in the world.

Still, we aren’t. We’re ‘just’ the worst of the best. Yay.

And why is this? It’s largely because of the war on drugs. Remind me again about how Democrats are crusading to end that (One among several…) root cause of our high incarceration rate. One of the handful of public figures willing to advocate that just kicked the bucket. He wasn’t a Democrat.

I find the incapacity/unwillingness of some here to notice when reality diverges from their intellectual prejudices rather annoying.

I seem to remember reality diverging from your intellectual prejudices when it came to the Race/IQ threads…

If the Cuban government tomorrow starts giving, say, 500K to every American who arrives there on a raft, the US will become – without doing anything new – one of those nations too.

“If the Cuban government tomorrow starts giving, say, 500K to every American who arrives there on a raft, the US will become – without doing anything new – one of those nations too.”

Bunk. If the Cuban government tomorrow started giving 500k to every American who arrivied on a raft, they’d be arriving on a raft after leaving America legally.

Yeah, traveling to Cuba is illegal in the US, but leaving the US isn’t. And you can be sure that if the Cuban government were stupid enough to offer cash grants to anybody who showed up on their short on a raft, we’d legalize rafting there, if only to cost Raul the money. ;)

All of which has little to do with our disturbingly high rate of incarceration, save only that, while we have a lot of problems here, I doubt we’re going to get good solutions from people who idolize dictators of ANY ideological persuasion.

“Any nation where you have to use people smugglers to leave is, in my book, a prision.”

Contra distinct to having your anal cavity, or its metaphoric equivalent, checked by medium-function social autistics because you’re traveling cross-country within a nation where you’re a citizen by birthright. A nation that until recently was loudly claiming to be the freest on earth.
Which yadda-yadda is met yadda-yaddda by the swinish reposte that bad people that hate us for our freedoms have made this necessary.
I’m afraid your analysis is flawed by willful, rationalized misprision, Bellmore.
The logic is essentially that because bad people have used their bad freedoms – to get on our planes, to move freely in our country – to hurt us, we’ll have to give up some of our good freedoms to get rid of those bad freedoms, possibly mostly all our freedoms, such as they are, until that happy day when all those bad freedom-using types have been stymied, or culled.
The same logic: horrible things are being done in private = bad privacy, so in order to get rid of that bad privacy, we’ll have to relinquish good privacy.
So in order to get rid of bad people…well you can see where that goes. Hasta la vista.
Speaking of Cuba: The revolution didn’t just replace a bunch of capitalist pigs with fatigue-wearing machos de la raza. It replaced scum-sucking American gangsters and their deeply embedded vice architectures, gangsters who were running a wide-open criminal enterprise using Cuban politicians as beards. The Fidelistas were quite naturally and legitimately concerned with retaliative reactions from those quarters. Then as the years rolled on those concerns became institutionalized, because the pressure from American stooge-politicians and those aforementioned gangsters never let up. This was all saturated in plain old capitalist thugocracy, such as removed Arbenz in Guatemala etc. Pretending that a teenager you’ve been beating the shit out of for years has suddenly gone loco and needs to be drugged and/or locked up because they’re rebelling and disrespectful of your authority – that’s one of the symptoms of psycho-parenting in action.
Not that the US was ever a parent to Cuba. But we were sort of the supposed kind of beacon of liberty to the world there for at least a little while. And Fidel’s Cuba began exactly in a desperate fight for liberty, against the corrupt and filthy social order they replaced. Context, Brett, it’s always really about context, not character. Pretending otherwise is dishonest.

one would think that governments set incarceration rates the way they set tariff rates

The government decides how many prisons to build, which (for the UK) sets the limit on the incarceration rate. If the goverment builds more prisons, the police and courts will create more prisoners to fill them. (At least, at the margin. There is possibly some threshold beyond which prison capacity is no longer the limiting factor.)

There’s certainly something to say for the law-enforcement practices and their efficiency. One could imagine that in Brazil, for example (more specifically Rio/St. Paulo metropolitan areas), incarceration rate would’ve been much higher had the police been more efficient. Nevertheless, for the most part it’s obviously socio-economic reasons.

Stopping the war on drugs would sure make a difference. It would be something like getting rid of Prohibition.
But issues of public safety and concern for crime victims remain.

I seem to remember someone from the UK’s Serious and Organized Crime Agency saying that given their estimates of the volume of the drugs trade, they would double the size of the UK prison population if they could apprehend and convict everyone who was guilty of drug offenses. (I wish I had a citation for this…) The point being that this would be undesirable even if it was possible.

Sure, soci-economic factors undoubtly have an effect. But also availaility of prison places, court time to deal with cases, police officers to investigate etc.