More on the US prison system

by Eszter Hargittai on June 3, 2011

We’ve talked about US incarceration rates on CT before. Peter Moskos approaches it with an interesting twist in his new book In Defense of Flogging. I have not read the book, but I did read his piece in the WSJ’s Ideas Market and you should, too. It does a very nice job of summarizing some of what is fundamentally wrong with the US prison system. Here’s a brief quote, but as we like to say, go read the whole thing:

In much of America, prisons have become nothing more than a massive government-run—one might even say “socialist”—job program. To oversimplify, but just a bit, we pay poor unemployed rural whites to guard poor unemployed urban blacks. Prison guards and private prisons advocate for more and more prisoners, literally profiting from human bondage. Such a peculiar institution should be unconscionable.

{ 119 comments }

1

Omega Centauri 06.03.11 at 2:24 pm

Except that the profitting comes from the consumption of external resources (funding), the “slaves” don’t perform productive work in excess of the external inputs (aside from the occasional license plate), but are an excuse for the employment of the guards. The whole system is a large negative sink economically.

I like the framing. The popular framing of isolating all the bad people from the good serves to perpetuate and expand the system.

2

Holden Pattern 06.03.11 at 2:50 pm

One can’t forget that by moving prisoners (who cannot vote) from urban areas to rural areas, one creates malapportionment of legislative districts (to the point of rotten boroughs in the rural areas), where those prisoners are counted in the rural areas, not the urban areas, for determining legislative representation.

Shockingly, most rural areas vote Republican, so this particular form of prison Keynesianism (along with military Keynesianism, the only “good” kind for conservatives) is yet another factor contributing to the overrepresentation of movement conservative insanity in American politics. Naturally, this is a feature, not a bug.

3

Stuart 06.03.11 at 2:53 pm

the “slaves” don’t perform productive work in excess of the external inputs (aside from the occasional license plate),

I seem to remember (from QI, which tends to be fairly well researched in the main), that actually the prison industrial complex dominates production across a fairly large range of goods in the US.

4

T. Borg 06.03.11 at 3:02 pm

I think it’s interesting that Moskos doesn’t address the issue of rehabilitation in this peice at all. I’m not sure how you could ignore the point when addressing the issue at book length, so maybe it’s lack in WSJ can be blamed on space, but it should be said: at least some of the money saved by this pitched switch to corporal punishment should be spent on enrolling the punished in remedial programs. Plenty has already been said about what sort of programs those should be.

The other question is, if flogging could be considered appropriate payment for an offense, should we even consider that offense a crime? This goes back to the idea that a lot of the people who are in prisons shouldn’t be there in the first place, and so isn’t directly rebuffed by Moskos’ preemptive defense in the second to last graf: “if flogging isn’t harsh enough—if we need to keep people locked up for years precisely because overcrowded prisons are so unbelievable horrific—then we’ve become perhaps a truly evil society.”

5

Barry 06.03.11 at 3:27 pm

Eszter, ‘interesting’ is a word, but really it just shows that the WSJ editorial page is a cesspool, and get nastier every day.

6

mds 06.03.11 at 3:53 pm

Though I’m delighted to see someone point out the enormous economic costs of such massive levels of incarceration, I’m not particularly keen to follow his logic of “Rehabilitation has failed; therefore, bring back public flogging.” Rehabilitation has rarely been seriously tried, especially thanks to those to whom the WSJ editoral pages normally cater. Attempts to make imprisonment more humane and to work towards reintegrating prisoners into society are met with spittle-flecked screeds by the “law-and-order” crowd; just look at the reaction to the recent US Supreme Court decision about California’s overcrowded prisons. And the premise seems to fall down on the fact that we incarcerate at a much higher level than basically anywhere, not just countries that still have corporal punishment. Perhaps we could look at a few more locations for tips before we leap straight to “Indonesia does it; why can’t we?”

More charitably, one could infer that the author’s argument is an exasperated one, along the lines of “Okay, fine. If we’re only really interested in punishment, why not use this cheap method of punishing miscreants and get it over with?” I would fear that this still gives away too much, and we’d end up with a system that, e.g., still incarcerated (certain classes of) people for using (certain) drugs, but flogged people for jaywalking. Remember, prior to that “flawed do-gooder logic” of the 18th century which Moskos sneers at, the British used an extensive corporal punishment system, and it was frequently horrifying to modern sensibilities.

7

J. Otto Pohl 06.03.11 at 4:06 pm

I do not think there is much economic profit in the prison labor itself. I believe most of it is used internally rather than producing items for sale.The “profit” of the prison industry I think mainly comes from state and federal taxes paid for by the free population. But, I would like to see some figures on this. Certainly it is possible to use prison labor on a large scale. Prison labor was an important part of the Soviet economy under Stalin and China still has labor camps geared towards generating profits. In the US South prisoners were rented out to private concerns which appears to be a more efficient way of earning money than the Stalinist method of running prisons as state enterprises with very poorly paid workers. After all the economic inefficiency of the Gulag was a major reason for its dismantlement soon after Stalin’s death.

8

ScentOfViolets 06.03.11 at 4:48 pm

“Jobs Program” is exactly right. Just as great swaths of the military machine seems to be a Socialist jobs program.

The comedy is that even conservative politicians appear to tacitly agree there’s a roll for government in directly creating jobs for people – a Socialistic practice by any other name.

The tragedy is that nothing like a Socialist-type jobs program will ever gain any traction with them unless it is associated with something punitive, like prisons or the military.

9

Jim Demintia 06.03.11 at 4:56 pm

Moskos doesn’t make it as clear here as in a recent piece on this in the Chronicle, but his advocating the return of flogging is, he says, a rhetorical device that aims to shock us into reflecting on the prison system in this country, what its aims are, and whether it is justified in its methods. It says something about how thoroughly naturalized our ineffective, unjust, and immoral “rehabilitation” methods are that people often find this idea so shocking, given how routinely much worse physical violence, to say nothing of the psychological kind, occurs in our prisons. Frankly, I think flogging actually IS more humane than this cruel punishment that denies its own reason for being.

10

someguy 06.03.11 at 5:04 pm

“Not too long ago, in 1970, America had 380,000 incarcerated people. That was considered normal. Today, thanks in large part to a misguided war on drugs and get-tough sentencing laws, there are 2.3 million Americans behind bars. Something has gone terribly wrong.”

Stop. Weird. Everyone should know this ->

http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm

[I spot checked this it seems to be based on FBI Uniform Crime Reports]

I am actually very receptive to the idea that we should experiment with letting out more non violent offenders.

And based on my quick look, after crudely adjusting for pop growth, 1.7 extra million prisoners is worth 500K less violent crimes per year including 15K fewer murders. [Using 1980 as the baseline for crimes and 1970 for prisoners.] Is 1.7 million extra prisoners worth 500K fewer violent crimes? A very fair question.

But everyone should be aware that getting tough on crime very much looks like it has worked. A lot of violent crime has been reduced. 500K fewer violent crimes per year = a huge improvement in the quality of life.

11

SamChevre 06.03.11 at 5:04 pm

I’ll just say subjectively (and I’ve been fairly severely beaten a few times) that I would far rather be caned Singapore-style than spend even 1 month in my local city jail.

12

dictateursanguinaire 06.03.11 at 5:16 pm

typical WSJ pap. nevermind the human tragedy of incarcerating people who don’t deserve it and most of whom never had a fair shot at life and many of whom (something like half as of 2k6 http://tinyurl.com/3gqpcyr) have mental illnesses…it’s the fact that it smells like (cue strings) SOCIALISM that we should get rid of it. wow. you don’t say. he acts like no one on the left has ever said anything critical of the prison-industrial complex. get with it dude, you’re way behind the times.

13

Stuart 06.03.11 at 5:21 pm

But everyone should be aware that getting tough on crime very much looks like it has worked. A lot of violent crime has been reduced. 500K fewer violent crimes per year = a huge improvement in the quality of life.

Isn’t it more likely that the high employment rate for a large chunk of the more recent crime statistics is a more important factor for the lower crime rates rather than a change in incarceration rates? Especially as you presumably have to offset it against the huge decrease in the quality of life for 1.7 million people.

14

mw 06.03.11 at 5:30 pm

Isn’t it more likely that the high employment rate for a large chunk of the more recent crime statistics is a more important factor for the lower crime rates rather than a change in incarceration rates?

Actually, that doesn’t appear to be the case. U.S. crime rates have dropped even during the recession:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/01/07/us-usa-crime-idUSTRE60613K20100107

15

MPAVictoria 06.03.11 at 5:52 pm

“But everyone should be aware that getting tough on crime very much looks like it has worked. A lot of violent crime has been reduced. 500K fewer violent crimes per year = a huge improvement in the quality of life.”

Blah, blah, Correlation does not equal causation blah blah.

16

William Timberman 06.03.11 at 5:54 pm

HP @ 2

The beauty part is that slaves now count as a whole person for the purposes of apportionment. The Enumeration Clause only gave the bastards 3/5. We’re told by Prisoners of the Census that this didn’t affect any Congressional seats in the 2010 reapportionment, but in intrastate politics of the rural/urban kind, I can’t imagine that it hasn’t been a factor. Either way, it’s the principle of the thing that I find galling.

Incidental rottenness is sometimes even more revealing — and more disgusting — than the intentional kind.

17

Henri Vieuxtemps 06.03.11 at 5:57 pm

@6 I do not think there is much economic profit in the prison labor itself. I believe most of it is used internally rather than producing items for sale.

Here’s Chomsky in 1998:

In Oregon and California there’s a fairly substantial textile industry in the prisons, with exports to Asia. At the very time people were complaining about prison labor in China, California and Oregon are exporting prison-made textiles to China. They even have a line called “Prison Blues.”

And it goes all the way up to advanced technology like data processing. In the state of Washington, Boeing workers are protesting the exports of jobs to China, but they’re probably unaware that their jobs are being exported to nearby prisons, where machinists are doing work for Boeing under circumstances that the management is delighted over, for obvious reasons.

http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/199804–.htm

I googled “Prison Blues”, and sure enough, from one of those struggling Australian retailers:
http://www.therealstore.com.au/prison-blues

“Yes. They’re really made in prison. Prison Blues.

The original, authentic, prison constructed blue jean brand. Manufactured by inmates at the Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution in Pendleton, Oregon, U.S.A. By men who aren’t necessarily your stereotypical hardened criminals- they’re fathers, sons, and brothers interested in making amends for the choices that put them behind bars. And they make some of the most durable denim clothes that you’ll ever lay your hands on. Find them. Check out that durable Fabric. Peruse that careful stitching. Feel that fit. Weld in them. Fall timber. Build houses. Haul. Dig in the dirt. You have the freedom to choose. Made to do hard time”

18

Lemuel Pitkin 06.03.11 at 6:05 pm

Moskos doesn’t make it as clear here as in a recent piece on this in the Chronicle, but his advocating the return of flogging is, he says, a rhetorical device that aims to shock us into reflecting on the prison system in this country, what its aims are, and whether it is justified in its methods.

I hope this is correct. Because the idea that the “liberal” alternative to mass imprisonment is mass torture, is beyond disgusting.

But how about you, Eszter? Are you for flogging?

19

Scott 06.03.11 at 6:08 pm

The prices on those ‘Prison Blues’ clothes are fairly steep- clearly someone is making some decent coin from that prison labour.

And that’s the rub, isn’t it? There’s too many people with a vested interest in the criminal justice system staying just as it is, thank you very much. Appeals to humanity are useless in the face of the profit motive.

20

Evil Bender 06.03.11 at 6:12 pm

I hope this is correct. Because the idea that the “liberal” alternative to mass imprisonment is mass torture, is beyond disgusting.

I think Moskos’s reference to A Modest Proposal suggests that we shouldn’t take his plan at face value.

21

BigHank53 06.03.11 at 6:32 pm

It’s not just political representation. An extra thousand prisoners in the county means education funding for the children they don’t have, highway funding for roads they never use, etc.

If I recall correctly, when I was working at a federal agency, all of the institution gray steel furniture was coming from a federal prison somewhere.

22

Chris Bertram 06.03.11 at 6:54 pm

FWIW, the tendering for more prisons to provide local employment thing is the sub-theme of Lee Child’s _61 Hours_ .

23

Phil 06.03.11 at 7:00 pm

“On the whole, the prisons have played out their allotted role. They cannot be reformed and must be gradually torn down.” – Robert Martinson (1974)

Martinson’s essay has gone down in history as the death knell of rehabilitation – he argued that we had no evidence that any approach to rehabilitation actually worked. (He retracted this a few years later, for what it’s worth.) What got lost in the noise was Martinson’s conclusion that we should stick with (non-custodial) rehabilitation in any case, since it cost a lot less than than incarceration and, at worst, didn’t do any more harm.

24

someguy 06.03.11 at 7:03 pm

MPAVictoria,

It isn’t the stock market and the Super Bowl winner.

Eat your vegetables they are good for you.

25

someguy 06.03.11 at 7:05 pm

BigHank53,

No it doesn’t.

26

Omega Centauri 06.03.11 at 7:09 pm

I’ve heard it said (by Kevin Drum among others), that the recent decrease in crime -especially violent crime rates was caused by the reduction in lead exposure. But of course politically the meme that its because we lock up the bad guys will continue to get great mileage.

27

Martin Bento 06.03.11 at 7:14 pm

On the question of representation, I don’t see why it doesn’t seem to be advocated that prisoners should have the right to vote. Period. Forget after release, even while incarcerated. Otherwise, the government has an incentive to imprison certain populations to move demographics, which is what is happening. And voting is a right of citizenship, not a privilege. Prisoners are citizens.

That said, I would rather be flogged or waterboarded than imprisoned for a long time. I think waterboarding preferable to flogging, as flogging leaves scars, and those will stigmatize the flogged person for life. For the hour I was being waterboarded, I’m sure I would think it was a mistake not to take the decade in prison, but for the rest of my life I won’t. I think the aversion to it is largely because the punitive aspect is more transparent, but that doesn’t make it more cruel And imprisonment is primarily for punishment.

As for rehabilitation, prison is worse than no rehabilitation; it is where criminals go to harden. Moving people into an environment where they have to deal constantly with other criminals in an often dangerous contest of wills and strength, where there is no hope, where a huge gap in their employment history is being created and their skills, if they have any, are atrophying or becoming outdated, makes it much more difficult for prisoners to subsequently pursue another career than criminal. If your punishment is a brief episode of torture, you will not necessarily even lose your job, if you have one. Your relationships remain stable. You have a much greater chance of returning to a normal life, which is very difficult after long incarceration.

28

Henri Vieuxtemps 06.03.11 at 7:22 pm

Blah, blah, Correlation does not equal causation blah blah.

I don’t think this is a case of “correlation does not equal causation”. Surely, if you incarcerate all 100% of the population, the crime (outside) will plummet to zero. Rather, this is a case of treating the symptom. With the treatment, arguably, being worse than the disease, or, at least, exacerbating the disease.

29

mor 06.03.11 at 7:24 pm

Check out the Texas Correctional Industries site, http://www.tci.tdcj.state.tx.us/

They even make flags, with grommets even, no information on whether the material is flame retardant for overseas use.

30

Salient 06.03.11 at 7:38 pm

If I recall correctly, when I was working at a federal agency, all of the institution gray steel furniture was coming from a federal prison somewhere.

Every substantial item in my dad’s old office (state govt) was built and (if substantial enough to require several lifters) installed by prisoners who worked harder than I have ever seen any human being work in my life for, if memory serves, $0.18 per hour, the top wage available to them. All the office furniture. The doors. The restroom fixtures. I think even the surveying field equipment.

But how about you, Eszter?

Aww, c’mon, Moskos says “I defend flogging because something radical is needed to reduce the cruelty of incarceration” and approvingly cites Dickens’ description of imprisonment as “torture of the body” and states that if we’re going to torture people, we should at least give them a choice of tortures. Moskos is an ally on our bombthrower flank, he’s as good at being productively provocative as Alan Grayson.

…although my preferred line of semi-trollish argument is that prisons are taking away jobs from law-abiding Americans, because it seems to get more traction.

Appeals to humanity are useless in the face of the profit motive.

…just as they were in the Gilded Age, right?

31

Bloix 06.03.11 at 8:23 pm

In a place like Oneida County, New York, the function of the prison system as a rural jobs program is not merely admitted – it’s touted as the purpose of the system:

“It is important to protect these jobs [nearly 3000] throughout Oneida and Oswego counties,” said Tenney. “Four prisons are here for a purpose.”

http://www.romeobserver.com/articles/2011/04/16/news/doc4da8ea3443784562912423.txt

32

mollymooly 06.03.11 at 8:25 pm

The worst is the enemy of the bad.

33

Norwegian Guy 06.03.11 at 8:59 pm

Most crime is done by young adults. And, if I recall correctly, there is a close connection between the US crime rate and changes in the age distribution. When the baby boomers became young adults in the 1960s and 1970s, the crime rate increased. Then, as the population got older, the crime rate fell.

34

Lemuel Pitkin 06.03.11 at 8:59 pm

Here’s Moskos:

We should offer criminals the choice between the status quo of prison and being caned, Singapore-style. … I defend flogging because something radical is needed to reduce the cruelty of incarceration.

… Since our only real goal is to punish, we should do so better, more honestly, and much more cheaply than we do now. And flogging avoids all the hogwash about prisons somehow being good for the soul.

Corporal punishment is an effective and comparatively humane way to bring our prison population back in line with human decency. By merely offering the choice of the lash, our prison population would plummet. Not only would this save tens of billions of dollars, it would save prisons for those who truly need to be there. …

Bringing back the lash is one way to destroy prison—if not completely, then at least for the millions of Americans for whom the punishment of prison is far, far worse than the crime they have committed. Would flogging in lieu of prison simply replace one evil with another? Well, yes. But at least it’s the lesser of two evils.

I find it hard to read this as satire. If he really meant it, how would he have written it any differently?

35

Neel Krishnaswami 06.03.11 at 9:10 pm

@Lemuel: I don’t think it’s satire, but I do think that Moskos is so infuriated by the cruelty and injustice of the prison system that he constructed a serious argument that flogging was less cruel, to see if he could make the absurdum visible by a reductio. What makes me think this is the following:

If you think flogging is too cruel to even consider, what would you do if given the choice between five years in prison and 10 brutal lashes? You’d probably choose the lash. Wouldn’t we all? What does that say about prison?

36

matth 06.03.11 at 9:30 pm

“If you think flogging is too cruel to even consider, what would you do if given the choice between five years in prison and 10 brutal lashes? You’d probably choose the lash. Wouldn’t we all?”

This kind of argument proves too much. The problem with the lash isn’t the amount of harm it inflicts; it’s the kind of harm it inflicts (and the fact that we have to institutionalize that harm, and that a government employee has to administer it in person).

I think most people would choose to perform oral sex on a guard if it would take 5 years off their prison sentence. That doesn’t mean prison is less humane than allowing guards to sexually assault prisoners.

37

ScentOfViolets 06.03.11 at 9:53 pm

This kind of argument proves too much. The problem with the lash isn’t the amount of harm it inflicts; it’s the kind of harm it inflicts (and the fact that we have to institutionalize that harm, and that a government employee has to administer it in person).

This doesn’t make any sense that I can see. Would you explain your idea in more detail?

I think most people would choose to perform oral sex on a guard if it would take 5 years off their prison sentence. That doesn’t mean prison is less humane than allowing guards to sexually assault prisoners.

What does it mean then? You seem to be saying that prisoners are willfully choosing the less humane option, but with no explanation as to why it is a less humane option, or why prisoners would choose it.

38

ScentOfViolets 06.03.11 at 10:00 pm

Martinson’s essay has gone down in history as the death knell of rehabilitation – he argued that we had no evidence that any approach to rehabilitation actually worked. (He retracted this a few years later, for what it’s worth.) What got lost in the noise was Martinson’s conclusion that we should stick with (non-custodial) rehabilitation in any case, since it cost a lot less than than incarceration and, at worst, didn’t do any more harm.

I suspect that – to paraphrase a famous quote – it’s not that rehabilition has been tried and found wanting, it’s that rehabilition has been found to be hard and therefore not tried :-(

39

Yarrow 06.03.11 at 10:02 pm

That doesn’t mean prison is less humane than allowing guards to sexually assault prisoners.

So you postulate a prison where no one is sexually assaulted? How does that work?

40

piglet 06.03.11 at 10:19 pm

http://www.kpbs.org/news/2010/jan/08/overcrowded-and-expensive-governor-addresses-calif/

GOVERNOR ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER: 30 years ago, 10% of the general fund went to higher education and only 3% went to prisons. Today, almost 11% goes to prisons and only 7.5% goes to higher education. Spending 45% more on prisons than universities is no way to proceed into the future. So I will submit to you a constitutional amendment so that never again do we spend a greater percentage of our money on prisons than on higher education. (Applause)

41

Martin Bento 06.03.11 at 10:24 pm

But the hypothetical isn’t assault; it is prisoners’ choosing to blow guards rather than blow years in prison. That is a form of prostitution, not sexual assault. Further, this leaves open the question of why guards should be able to benefit from punishment (and, if you think they shouldn’t, that indicts the present system, where they do, in form of increased employment). This question doesn’t arise for torture.

42

Barry 06.03.11 at 11:25 pm

Neel Krishnaswami 06.03.11 at 9:10 pm

” @Lemuel: I don’t think it’s satire, but I do think that Moskos is so infuriated by the cruelty and injustice of the prison system that he constructed a serious argument that flogging was less cruel, to see if he could make the absurdum visible by a reductio. What makes me think this is the following:”

What part of Wall Street Journal editorial page do you not understand? For as long as I can remember it, their job has been to launder right-wing ideas, and to get them implemented if possible, even if it takes decades. And that was *before* Murdoch.

These are the guys whose fiscal lies and econo-BS helped bring us to our present condition in the USA.

Now, flogging *them*, that I’d support.

43

Andrew 06.04.11 at 12:24 am

The articles runs together two entirely different issues:
(1) whether we should punish at all or as severely for certain crimes, and
(2) the state of the prison system itself.

The proper remedy for problems with the prison system is an alteration of the prison system – not a change in criminal law. Overcrowding is solved by building more prisons, for example.

The proper remedy for overly punitive laws is to render them less punitive. That doesn’t have to involve the introduction, bizarrely, of flogging.

And the comment about “poor unemployed rural whites” being employed to guard “poor unemployed urban blacks” is frankly obnoxious.

44

Jim Demintia 06.04.11 at 12:41 am

“And the comment about ‘poor unemployed rural whites” being employed to guard “poor unemployed urban blacks’ is frankly obnoxious.”

Oh? And how would you describe the situation at the Auburn Correctional Facility in upstate NY? Or this situation: http://www.npr.org/2011/03/25/134850972/town-relies-on-troubled-youth-prison-for-profits. Granted, Walnut Grove is 40 percent black, so there are likely a healthy number of African American guards there as well (many more than at, say, Auburn), but I’m willing to bet that the proportion of African-American inmates there is significantly higher, and I think Moskos’ formulation nicely captures the racism of the system in general.

45

someguy 06.04.11 at 12:44 am

Norwegian Guy,

That is a good point.

But

http://www.youthfacts.org/crime.html

And by my crude estimates 14-25 year age group percentage of us population based on Census numbers

1960 15%
1970 20%
1980 18%
1990 14.5%
2000 13.5%
2010 13.9%

And crime peaks in 1980ish not in 1970 and is worse in 1990 than in 1960 and continues to decline from 200o to 2010.

Plus I think the break down of the two parent family would swamp any other demographic effect.

46

Chris E 06.04.11 at 1:31 am

“What part of Wall Street Journal editorial page do you not understand? For as long as I can remember it, their job has been to launder right-wing ideas, and to get them implemented if possible, even if it takes decades. And that was before Murdoch.”

There is the possibility that the WSJ and the author were motivated by different motives.

47

Barry 06.04.11 at 2:20 am

So?

48

ckc (not kc) 06.04.11 at 2:28 am

… or, if chain gangs attract you, consider a conservative option from Ontario

49

MPAVictoria 06.04.11 at 2:48 am

someguy

Love to see you prove the connection between longer sentences and lower crime rates. I say again correlation is not causation.

50

mclaren 06.04.11 at 3:43 am

Peter Moskos notes: Ironically, once people think about it, they often say flogging isn’t harsh enough. …[I]f flogging isn’t harsh enough—if we need to keep people locked up for years precisely because overcrowded prisons are so unbelievable horrific—then we’ve become perhaps a truly evil society.

Correct-a-mundo.

Evil exists.

It’s real.

I see it when I look around me. America has gone over to the dark side. Something grotesque and hideous has happened to this country. Americans have become evil: we love torture, we dote on prison rape, we adore the prospect of murdering innocent children and women with remote-control drones.

The people in this country had better get down on their knees and pray for mercy rather than justice, because if America really gets what it deserves when the karma comes back around, it’s going to be so horrific it’ll make strong men gag and puke to watch.

51

Charlie 06.04.11 at 3:44 am

I doubt higher incarceration rates caused a drop in violent crime. Canada has a much lower rate of violent crime than the United States and we incarcerate far less people.

I also think that incarcerating drug users (as an example) and turning them into hardened criminals by putting them through the prison system actually makes them more likely to commit violent crimes when they do eventually leave prison.

52

Emma in Sydney 06.04.11 at 4:21 am

The crime rate is also falling in countries that don’t lock up nearly so many of their citizens, like, say, Canada.

53

The Tragically Flip 06.04.11 at 5:00 am

Emma makes the point I wanted to make, but also I believe there are studies comparing state crime rates compared to sentencing length showing harshness doesn’t lower crime.

Most crime is impulse, and further the deterrent effect drops off quite drastically after some point. Is there any crime anyone would not commit for fear of a 10 year sentence, that they would do if it only risked 5?

54

sg 06.04.11 at 5:23 am

someguy, looking very briefly at that youth crime website you linked to, there seems to be compelling evidence of a cohort effect. That is, the generation of kids who committed crime in the 10-17 age group in the 60s have matured through the age groups and taken their crime with them. Under 18 crime has dropped but over 18 crime has increased, and the largest increases in 2005 relative to 1960 were in the 2005 age groups that were aged 10-17 in the 1960s.

i.e. the baby boomers were arseholes.

The drop in 10-17 age group crime is entirely consistent with higher school age retention. For your argument to work, you’d have to show a reduction in crime rates across the life cycle, and that hasn’t happened, as is clear from Table 2. The overall drop in crime since the 1960s appears to have been driven entirely by those aged under 25. Now what, besides imprisonment rates, has changed for that group during the last 50 years? Pretty much everything.

So your argument doesn’t work.

55

nick s 06.04.11 at 6:51 am

the comment about “poor unemployed rural whites” being employed to guard “poor unemployed urban blacks” is frankly obnoxious.

What’s obnoxious is that it’s true. Take the Wallens Ridge and Red Onion supermaxes in the extreme west of Virginia: together they house 1600 inmates, with the same number of employees, in a county that’s 97% white with a median household income of $26,149. That’s not an isolated example of how small-govt.-loving Americans will happily pay for housing, education and training, as long as the recipients are locked up in facilities in the whitest, most rural parts of the state.

The question of prison labour is difficult, because there’s rehabilitative value in jobs that resemble those available outside, but it comes at an obvious price to the non-incarcerated workfornce.

Another related point: there are a lot of Iraq/Afghanistan veterans who, once their active duty commitment is over, need jobs, and end up working in the prison system. Conversely, some of the Abu Ghraib guards were reservists whose day jobs were in jails back home.

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Martin Bento 06.04.11 at 8:22 am

“the largest increases in 2005 relative to 1960 were in the 2005 age groups that were aged 10-17 in the 1960s.”

False.

sg, the page says the greatest increase by quite a margin is in the 35-49 group, as of 2005. That’s born in 1956-1970. Most of those would be below 10 for the entirety of the 1960’s, and all would be below 10 for most of the 60’s. Strauss and Howe place the children of the early 60s in with Gen X, because that’s what is shown in their attitudes and behaviors, which would make this group mostly Gen X. Otherwise, it’s an even split. Worth noting the the second biggest increase is the next group down in age, not the next group up, which would the rest of Gen X. Furthermore, per capita youth crime levels (both minors and those below 25) peaked in the early 90s. Those were not boomers.

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Andrew 06.04.11 at 10:59 am

Jim @44: Granted, Walnut Grove is 40 percent black, so there are likely a healthy number of African American guards there as well (many more than at, say, Auburn), but I’m willing to bet that the proportion of African-American inmates there is significantly higher, and I think Moskos’ formulation nicely captures the racism of the system in general.

The comment in the article is obnoxious in that it implies we have so many prisons in an attempt to give poor rural unemployed whites a job and poor urban blacks a cell. The racial composition of correctional officers has absolutely nothing to do with whether (1) some of our law are too punitive or (2) our prison system is overcrowded and poorly policed.

Emma @52: The crime rate is also falling in countries that don’t lock up nearly so many of their citizens, like, say, Canada.

There are also examples where the US sees a greater drop in the frequency of a given offense than a similar country which imposes lighter sentences for that offense.

I think the overall consensus is that the longer sentences of the US account for some proportion of our drop in crime, even through the recession, but not all of it. There are other factors at work too.

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Emma in Sydney 06.04.11 at 11:37 am

Andrew, I think there is no such consensus, either inside the US or outside it. The US is one of the most dangerous and violent societies in the developed world. Locking up whole cities worth of people just makes it worse.

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Barry 06.04.11 at 12:44 pm

Andrew: “The comment in the article is obnoxious in that it implies we have so many prisons in an attempt to give poor rural unemployed whites a job and poor urban blacks a cell. The racial composition of correctional officers has absolutely nothing to do with whether (1) some of our law are too punitive or (2) our prison system is overcrowded and poorly policed.”

A whole bunch of assertions, but I can’t find the proof.

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J. Otto Pohl 06.04.11 at 12:57 pm

Regarding prison labor I was aware of Prison Blues jeans. But, the examples given do not answer my question which I probably did not make clear enough. I was looking for a quantification of the value of prison produced goods in the US versus the cost of maintaining the prisons. That is what is the net profit of these goods after you pay the wages and benefits of the guards and administrators, not to mention deduct the cost of feeding the prisoners? My guess is that the compensation for free employees in the prison system is high enough that there is a substantial net negative profit from prisons. Most of the money is coming from taxpayers.

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Norwegian Guy 06.04.11 at 1:17 pm

“So you postulate a prison where no one is sexually assaulted? How does that work?”

There are surely countries were it is much less common than in the US. And if it’s political impossible to improve the conditions in American prisons, wouldn’t introducing a cruel and unusual punishment like flogging require a constitutional amendment? That isn’t easy either.

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someguy 06.04.11 at 2:33 pm

Emma in Sydney,

“The US is one of the most dangerous and violent societies in the developed world. Locking up whole cities worth of people just makes it worse.”

No, it doesn’t make it worse.

Here is one link

http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/crimedata.html

Comparing between countries is tricky but crime is strongly trending down in the US.

You are more likely to be murdered in the US. The US murder rate is half of what it was in 1980 but is still very high compared to rest of the developed world.

But you are more likely to be robbed or raped in Sweden.

Overall the crime rate is higher in Europe than the US. You are more likely to be the victim of rape or murder in the US.

But the trend is very strongly down in the US. The US is catching up to, narrowing the gap, or in some classifications over taking Europe.

US crime policy is greatly reducing crime.

I would very much like us to see if we could reduce the rate further and at the same time let out more non violent offenders. More time for rapists and less or no time for pot dealers.

But I realize that current policies have greatly reduced crime.

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KCinDC 06.04.11 at 2:49 pm

Norwegian Guy, much easier than a constitutional amendment would be a Supreme Court ruling that flogging isn’t cruel and unusual punishment.

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Chris E 06.04.11 at 4:24 pm

” So?”

So, it could simultaneously be a case of the WSJ being up to their usual level of nastiness, and the author engaging in satire (which is what you were quick to discount).

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nick s 06.04.11 at 4:30 pm

The comment in the article is obnoxious in that it implies we have so many prisons in an attempt to give poor rural unemployed whites a job and poor urban blacks a cell.

Look at where prisons have been built, especially in the eastern US: they’re generally on the outskirts of small towns in rural areas where industry went away. Look particularly at where private prisons are built, and how they’re designed to profit from particular trends in enforcement and sentencing policies.

I wouldn’t call your naivety obnoxious, but it’s heading that way.

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Henri Vieuxtemps 06.04.11 at 5:27 pm

@65, now, this is perhaps a case where the correlation/causation thing is relevant. Is there any evidence that this is a deliberate policy designed to benefit rural whites, for being white? Not to mention that less than a half of those incarcerated are blacks.

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ScentOfViolets 06.04.11 at 6:20 pm

now, this is perhaps a case where the correlation/causation thing is relevant. Is there any evidence that this is a deliberate policy designed to benefit rural whites, for being white?

My guess is that if you look at the original selection process, rural, heavily-white townships where any sort of productive commerce has fled will tend to predominate the possible sites. If some official ever suggested that a new jail be located near our town, not so small and doing rather well relatively speaking (education plus six or seven hospitals), the NIMBY howls would be heard from here to the Great Lakes.

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Bloix 06.04.11 at 7:04 pm

##66: anyone with the slightest acquaintance with upstate NY politics would find this question laughably naive.

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ScentOfViolets 06.04.11 at 7:26 pm

Bloix, is there something wrong in the logic of hypothesis? Do you dispute it? Or are you simply saying that no matter what the relative numbers are, the white rural township is going to win out?

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William Timberman 06.04.11 at 7:35 pm

HV @ 66

Evidence, you say. For whose eyes? The way I see it, we bring people from Africa by force. For 200 years, give or take, we hold them as slaves. For another 150 years, we deny them equal participation in the dominant culture. To the extent that we can, we refuse to hire them for any but menial jobs, or provide more than a pittance for their education. Despite this, many of them prosper. Those who don’t develop subcultures of their own. Not bothering to understand any of this, we define participants in these subcultures as urban predators, and lock them up.

Since, despite our best efforts, this proves to be more expensive than we’d hoped, we decide to lighten our tax burden by delivering them to the tender mercies of purpose-built corporations which are willing, for a seeming pittance, to take them off their hands. These corporations can make money even at the price agreed upon in part because they build their prisons in rural, white, non-union towns where the help is reliable, and no one will ask them any questions about what goes on inside the walls. This we call justice, and claim that the burden of proof that it’s anything else rests with those liberal crybabies who’re always whining about something, no matter what we do.

No causal connection. Yeah, right….

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nick s 06.04.11 at 7:49 pm

Another example: Otter Creek in Kentucky, a private prison in a county that’s 98% white, median household income $21,168. It was used as a women’s prison — holding prisoners from Hawaii — but its record has recently come under scrutiny.

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Henri Vieuxtemps 06.04.11 at 8:19 pm

Some high-flying rhetoric there, William. “We bring people from Africa by force?” I did not know that. You should stop doing it.

Not bothering to understand any of this, we define participants in these subcultures as urban predators, and lock them up.

You may define participants in subcultures as anything you want, but if their cases are heard by juries of their peers, i.e. of the same subculture, as it should be, then the culture is not a problem. Poverty sure is, regardless of the race; culture is secondary.

because they build their prisons in rural, white, non-union towns

What’s the significance of these towns being white? Are you implying that non-whites can’t be reliable guards? Why, what are you saying?

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William Timberman 06.04.11 at 8:34 pm

Yes, Henri, it’s just rhetoric. No connection with reality at all. I think you can safely ignore all of it.

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Henri Vieuxtemps 06.04.11 at 8:42 pm

In reality there is correlation. There are convincing explanations of why this correlation exists; you cited some of them. What I don’t see is evidence that people are sent to jails for being black and/or that guards are hired for being white.

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nick s 06.04.11 at 9:04 pm

What’s the significance of these towns being white?

I’m not going to put words in William’s mouth, but the significance is that they’re often old company towns, where the prison replaces the mill or mine as the dominant employer, and company towns have a long history of racial tension and deference to the boss.

What I don’t see is evidence that people are sent to jails for being black and/or that guards are hired for being white.

What exactly would you want to see? Prosecutorial and sentencing standards, particularly for drug crimes, have resulted in a particular prison population; states decide where to house those prisoners in the knowledge of their demographics, and in the context of lobbying from legislators who’d like jobs in their districts and private companies that build facilities speculatively in locations assumed to be favourable.

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Bill Gardner 06.04.11 at 9:31 pm

I recommend that everyone interested in this topic read Mark Kleiman’s book, When Brute Force Fails. As I wrote elsewhere,

Kleiman’s book [is] a model for applying science to social policy. There is a theory, there is a great deal of (summarized) empirical data, there is a fair-minded discussion of many opposing points of view, and — wonderfully — there is an incisive discussion of how and why he might be wrong.

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Netbrian 06.04.11 at 10:45 pm

@76

That book annoyed me because it mentions that many of the things I’d like to be true aren’t actually true.

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sg 06.05.11 at 5:18 am

Martin Bento, good point! But I think my paragraph two still stands: the changes in crime rates since the 1970s haven’t been consistent across the life cycle, there are cohort effects and the biggest reduction has been amongst the 10-17 year olds (-20%), with the smallest increase in the group most likely to commit crime (18-24 year olds, at +40%). But these groups are also those that experienced the largest changes outside of law enforcement, particularly in school retention, university admissions, and non-law enforcement forms of child protection.

You would also think, if someguy’s theory is true, that you wouldn’t see an explosion of crime amongst cohorts with already low crime rates (e.g. the 35-49 year age group).

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Martin Bento 06.05.11 at 7:29 am

sg, my opinion is that there are too many confounding variables to draw the kind of conclusion someguy wants to draw, so I generally agree with you there. Even if someguy is right, though, which is possible, that leaves open whether corporal punishment can have comparable deterrent effects. No one seems to have responded to the advantages I outlined. Let me reiterate:

1) People need not have their lives entirely destroyed. They can maintain their current relationships, job (if any), skills (if any), and connections. This makes it *much* easier to return to some form of livelihood other than crime, even if that was your previous livelihood.

2) People are not put in a criminal environment where they must to survive adopt criminal attitudes and behaviors, reinforced over years.

3) People are not placed in serious danger of physical or sexual assault.

4) People are not older at the end of the punishment, seeking somehow to make up in all respects for lost time that cannot truly be made up.

5) The fact of punishment need not be a matter of public record. Long incarceration, even if not officially on record, is hard to hide in your history. This is actually why I oppose flogging: it leaves scars.

As near as I can tell, the great counterargument is an emotional aversion. We are all socialized to the norms of our culture, and one of those is to regard corporeal punishment as “cruelty”, but imprisonment as “justice”. Is there any meaningful sense in which long term incarceration is not cruel? If it is not more cruel than pain, why would people choose pain over it (does any one doubt this)? ISTM, that we have been socialized to accept incarceration but not corporeal punishment, and this is what is feeding the reaction.

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Jim Buck 06.05.11 at 10:38 am

Flogging should stay in the S&M clubs , where it belongs; any attempt to reintroduce it into the penal system is likely to result in the infliction of physical punishment becoming yet one more perk for a depraved prison workforce.

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someguy 06.05.11 at 3:07 pm

sg ,

Pure sophistry on your part.

What you think disproves my argument supports it.

It makes perfect sense that the portion of an age cohort that became habituated to crime during lax high crime periods would continue to relatively more crime as they aged.

Probably the biggest and most important change that has been made is how we treat serious crimes by teenagers. In the 70s is was ohhh you had no choice you are poor. Now it is 20 to life. We would expect to see the biggest crime rate drop among teenagers.

Also that site was focused crime to population ratio by age group. Overall crime is way down. It is quite possible that an age cohort could have a higher ratio and still be committing less crime.

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someguy 06.05.11 at 3:10 pm

sg,

Actually the drop among teenagers is even more amazing when we consider the proliferation of single parent families.

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Lemuel Pitkin 06.05.11 at 3:30 pm

the great counterargument is an emotional aversion.

Are you insane?

Of course, I feel a deep emotional aversion to the idea of flogging people. I really hope you do too.

But that has nothing to do with the question of whether flogging is better or worse than prison (yes, I’d choose the cane too), because *this is not the choice*. Legitimizing torture in no way delegitimizes the prison system; it just means that we’ll get both.

If you want to argue against our insanely punitive impulses that rule our criminal justice system, you have to argue against those insanely punitive impulses. Not offer them another outlet.

Do you really think, once we get used to seeing black men whipped on the public square, we’ll feel worse about locking them in cages? Again, are you insane?

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sg 06.05.11 at 3:38 pm

No someguy, the drop in crime among teenagers is completely explicable when we consider the increase in rates of education amongst teenagers. Basically, they’re staying in school and committing less crime. Your “oh, that’s excusable because you’re poor” line is just a bullshit stereotype. And your “now it’s 20 to life” line applies equally to older criminals, yet crime rates in these groups are sky-rocketing. And note we’re talking rates, so if the people who “became habituated” to high crime in the 60s learnt a lesson from these “lax high crime periods ” lax high crime periods we would expect their crime rates to remain unchanged. But they skyrocketed.

So tell me, why is it that the “preventative” 20 to life regimes of modern US law enforcement have resulted in huge increases in crime amongst those aged over 25?

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Lemuel Pitkin 06.05.11 at 4:05 pm

(OK, “are you insane” is out of line. What can I say, that darned emotional aversion got the better of me.)

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Alex 06.05.11 at 5:42 pm

I note, as no-one else seems to have done, that he describes the US prison system as a peculiar institution.

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someguy 06.06.11 at 12:08 am

sg ,

I am not really sure why you think that unless crime rates go down in every age cohort am wrong. Crime doesn’t do down in a certain age cohort and thus crime rates cannot have been reduced by getting tough on crime?

But looking closer it looks like you are wrong about the crime rates rising in certain age cohorts let alone sky rocketing.

http://www.youthfacts.org/crime.html

Felony arrest peak 1985 to 1994 and then decline in every age cohort . The age cohorts move together.

I wish had more time and could find some good links demonstrating how what you call bs stereotype was pretty much the standard liberal position in the 70s. There is a reason why conservative ideas became so popular and 70s liberalism was it.

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Glen Tomkins 06.06.11 at 3:24 pm

Instead of incarceration or corporal punishment, we should try the sequence of fines, jobs programs, forebearance and finally, if all else fails, capital punishment.

Obviously, if fines, even fines adjusted for earnings potential, are going to be your first line punishment, then you’re going to have to work huge amounts of forebearance into the system. People who commit crimes will often not be the sort of people with jobs, or likely to keep at the jobs made available by the jobs program.

But society could well afford a lot of forebearance if the crime were, say, check-kiting. The criminal would have to kite thousands of checks over decades, consistently refusing to work at an honest job to make good on his or her thefts, and refusing after hundreds of convictions to abstain from further check-kiting, before capital punishment would be applied. We would probably never reach an end of forebearance for check-kiting.

As the crimes in question grew more damaging, you would show less forebearance, you would tolerate less recidivism before giving up on the criminal’s ability to stop preying off others for his or her livelihood. But at no point would you do anything but help the criminal pay his fine and get on with a non-predatory life. Well, at no point until the end, when you give up and execute the hopeless recidivist.

The problem with incarceration is that it is retributive damage to the criminal, and as such, I don’t think you ever reach a point that you can brand someone as a hopelessly unreclaimable sociopath. Our prisons seem designed to produce sociopaths, to turn people who might otherwise eventually adjust quite well to a non-predatory life, instead into conscienseless sociopaths, or worse, people who feel quite reasonably justified in preying off a society that brutalized them so pointlessly and without conscience by throwingf them in prison. The only way to reach moral certainty that capital punishment is the only solutuion, that a given individual can’t be reached, that the only thing to be done is to get rid of them, is to first try reaching them, and try over and over again as often as the cost of their offenses, the danger to the innocent, allows.

Corporal punishment seems to me to be, while arguably less damaging to the criminal, still a sort of damaging retribution that does no help, and only harm, in guiding someone to a non-predatory life. I’m not even sure it is less damaging than incarceration, as violating someone’s person is exactly what constitutes what we consider to be the most serious crimes. What would our criminal justice system do to someone convicted of “merely” flogging another person? (Of course, you have to ask what sort of punishment would be appropriate for the crime of incarcerating another person for decades, I would grant Moskos that, but only that.)

You would only refuse to commute the initial death sentence in cases where even the first crime makes it clear that the criminal lacks a conscience. Pre-meditated murder for profit, pre-meditated multiple murders for any reason, the murder of a child under any but extraordinary circumstances, murder in connnection with rape, are examples of actions you could argue make it obvious that the criminal is not reachable, at least not with any reasonable prospect of success, and therefore should not be given the opportunity to offend again even once. Of course, for such cases, we would need to insist on higher levels of certainty of guilt than we now tolerate. Such a conviction in which there would be no commutation to a fine, no forebearance, but an outright death sentence; should require conviction without any reliance on witnesses whose testimony comes as a result of a plea bargain, or who otherwise stand in any way to gain from false witness. Conviction without that level of certainty would require commutation of the death penalty to the usual fine.

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Uncle Kvetch 06.06.11 at 3:42 pm

If you want to argue against our insanely punitive impulses that rule our criminal justice system, you have to argue against those insanely punitive impulses. Not offer them another outlet.

Amen. Thanks for that, Lemuel.

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piglet 06.06.11 at 8:52 pm

Pohl 60: “I was looking for a quantification of the value of prison produced goods in the US versus the cost of maintaining the prisons.”

Compare my post at 40. The high cost of the prison system is the one consideration that has forced states in recent years to slightly change their approach, allow probation for more nonviolent offenders, shorten some prison sentences. It is for that reason that the growth in the prison population has come to a stop: building more prisons is just not affordable anymore. To the extent that profits are made from prison labor, they aren’t substantial enough to change the equation (at least for the tax-payer; privately run prisons seem to be profitable.)

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piglet 06.06.11 at 9:02 pm

someguy 62:

“But the trend is very strongly down in the US. The US is catching up to, narrowing the gap, or in some classifications over taking Europe.”

I wonder how US crime statistics would look if crimes committed in prisons (whether perpetrated by prisoners or by guards) were properly counted. Of course this isn’t happening. AFAICT hardly anybody who seriously studies the issue believes that the US prisons system deserves credit for reducing crime. But it is true that prison inmates are mostly kept out of the crime statistics.

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chris 06.06.11 at 9:03 pm

People are not older at the end of [corporal] punishment

Doesn’t the idea that this is an advantage cut against the idea that crime rates are down because the high-crime demographic grew up? If crime is fundamentally not a rational cost-benefit decision (which is what all these incentive schemes are grounded on, whether they admit it or not) but a failure of impulse control, then incarceration has one advantage: eventually, the criminal’s hormone levels will change with age, even if we don’t actually do anything to rehabilitate him/her.

Different crimes may have different causes, but ISTM that unless we understand and attack the reasons that people actually commit crimes, we won’t have any success at convincing them not to.

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Martin Bento 06.06.11 at 10:43 pm

someguy, if you look at Table 2.1, Part 1 Felonies Per Capita, the column headed “All Ages”, the highest number in that column is 1,383.2. That represents1990-1994. Not the early 80’s, the early 90’s, that was the peak. The only cohort that peaked in the early 80’s was 50+, which at that time meant children of The Depression or earlier. I’m not sure what that means, or if it means anything, given the small numbers of that age group. But the other cohorts increased serious crime, relative to the previous standard for their age, through the 80’s and into the 90’s, and then declined. The number for the late 90’s is about the same as for the 1970’s as a whole, and the low numbers for the 60’s have yet to be regained, though 2005 does get close to that late 60’s figure. Since, as you yourself have implicitly acknowledged by putting the serious crime decline in the 80’s, the 80’s were the time of the big change in penal policy, this doesn’t fit the story you’re trying to tell at all. OTOH, the National Crime Victimization Study seems to tell a different story. Since the link on the Youthfacts page to the NCVS doesn’t work, it’s hard to say why this should be so. The main differences between the NCVS and the Uniform Crime Reports is that the former include unreported crimes, but are simply based on survey answers, while the latter include reported crimes that have been investigated and solved. The discrepancy might seem to have something to do with serious underreporting to police and/or serious exaggeration to survey takers in the 70’s, relative to now. I’m not sure why either of these should be so. It may reflect that a larger percentage of criminals are now caught – indeed, considering all the new technology that exists for this purpose (surveillance video, DNA testing, scanners), it would be surprising if this were not so. But if the escalating FBI-reported felony rate of the 80’s and early 90s is partially an artifact of more effective catching of criminals, that can’t explain the sharp decline of the late 90’s. I wish Youthfacts had provided a working link so we could examine the NCVS data (as we can the FBI data) which elsewhere on the Internet appears somewhat buried in all the NCVS data and requires one to learn new tools to extract particulars – too much work for a blog comment, sorry.

So the data supporting even the claim that the decline in serious crime coincides with the imposition of more severe penalties is inconsistent at best. You’re going to need a better argument before you even get to correlation, much less causation. And completely other explanations for the steep decline in the late 90’s have been proposed – including that the children of the 70’s had less exposure to lead as it was removed from most gasoline and directly from exhaust with smog devices beginning at that time (I believe the linkage of lead exposure to violent and antisocial behavior is now uncontroversial), and that legal abortion meant a much lower percentage of children were “unwanted”. I’m not prepared to evaluate either of those theories, but they have been seriously argued, so an argument of the sort you propose should at least address them. There is also sg’s point that kids are staying in school a lot more, which has always had an inverse correlation with crime, and, I would add, continuing with their educations further, which has a similar correlation later in life.

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Martin Bento 06.06.11 at 10:47 pm

lemuel,

Your argument seems to depend in part on something I never proposed: that corporeal punishment should be a public spectacle. Possibly, it would be a more effective deterrent if it were, but punishment as spectacle does not bring out the best in the spectators, so I would rather do without it. Flogging specifically would resonate with some ugly American history, so I would particularly avoid doing that one publicly. I also would specify that no one could be subject both to CP and imprisonment for the same offense, forcing a tradeoff. If you’re a proponent, you get to specify the parameters of what you advocate.

Your objection that flogging would not reduce incarceration because the public appetite for punishment is essentially bottomless means you would evaluate this proposal by what you regard as its likely real world consequences, given a highly cynical appraisal of the electorate. But , given those premises, advocating shorter prison sentences on the simple basis of compassion is a non-starter. Such advocacy you seem to evaluate by some other standard than likely consequences, which are nil. Put another way, if you advocate shorter sentences, which seems more likely to gain traction with the bloodthirsty electorate: simply advocating shorter sentences or advocating them accompanied by an alternative method of punishment?

There is one force pushing towards less incarceration: the public, particularly the well-off, have no appetite to pay for it. This is what has hit California: it will gladly impose the penalties, but it will not pony up the taxes. However, largely because of media sensationalism, people are scared sh1tless of crime and are not going to tolerate lower sentences unless they are convinced that there is still a strong deterrent in place. CP can fill that bill with much less destruction to the prisoner’s life than incarceration.

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Martin Bento 06.06.11 at 10:52 pm

Glen, fines, corporeal punishment, imprisonment, and capital punishment are all retributive. Done outside the state, all are crimes: theft, aggravated assault, kidnapping, and murder, respectively. You say you object to punishment of the body, but execution is the ultimate punishment of the body. You also attack incarceration and CP for muddying the case that some people are irredeemable and hence should be executed. Even if you accept capital punishment, I don’t see why providing more clear justification for it is a legitimate goal of the justice system. Nor do I see a reason for “forbearance” on crime, until we meet the point of execution. I see nothing wrong with punishments that are harmful, but short of execution, and I think the contrary view will lead both to more crime and more execution, hence a generally higher level of harmful activity in the society, especially as compared to CP. So the moral basis of your proposed system seems completely incoherent to me.

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Martin Bento 06.06.11 at 10:57 pm

Chris, sure, but I haven’t argued that long incarceration reduces crime simply by isolating the criminals (or forcing them to confine their crimes to one another, as piglet suggests). I’ve no doubt this effect is present, but doubt it is of great significance. If corporeal punishment opponents believe otherwise, then they should argue that, and defend incarceration as preventative detention, rather than claiming that CP is somehow less humane than long imprisonment.

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someguy 06.07.11 at 1:32 am

Martin Bento ,

I am note sure what your time lag expectations are. The first break in the incarceration rate vs the crime rate is in 1982. The crime rate peaks in 1991. That is a fairly big lag but certainly seems within the realm of likely expectations.

I guess part of it depends on your expectations regarding how incarceration reduces crime. I would expect some years lag even if I attributed all of the reduction to rational calculations on the part of criminals regarding risk and reward.

Since I think culture/habits and keeping serious recidivist risks off the streets probably plays a bigger role, I think a 9 year lag makes a lot of sense.

For me the story is fairly straight forward and compelling, much, much, much more so than lead.

Again, it depends of the offense [and I recognize that a conviction for a non violent offense doesn’t mean the offender is non violent] but I support alternatives to imprisonment, probably more so than the average American.

But casually dismissing tough on crime as a failure or coincidence while watching crime rates plummet strikes me as weak.

A better alternative narrative than lead plus hand waving and shouting no correlation would help.

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Martin Bento 06.07.11 at 10:06 am

someguy, in comment 45, you stated that the crime rate peaked “1980ish”. At that time, you said nothing about expecting a 9 year or so lag, and, if you had, it would have presented a problem for your theory, as the lock-em-up period clearly did not begin in the early 70s. Now you have looked at the data a little more closely and find the peak in 1991. All of a sudden, there had to be a lag! How could anyone expect anything different? There is no intellectual integrity in this. It doesn’t even matter whether your initial assertion or your later one or neither is correct. You don’t get to do without a lag if your theory requires it, and then toss a lag in when the data doesn’t fall where you thought it would.

As for alternative theories, I mentioned at least three and implied another. To recap:
1)sg’s theory that declining crime rates among young people, which always shift aggregate statistics, have declined with high-school dropout rates, following a long-established, lifelong, correlation. I elaborated that post-secondary education has also increased, which also has such a correlation. Now, to discount this theory, what you should do is look up the education statistics, run a regression, and see if anything remains of the correlation you want to claim. So go run off and do that, and let us know if you still think you have anything.
2)There is also the theory, propounded by Richard Nevin and others that lead poisoning, primarily from gasoline, had increased criminal activity through brain damage, primarily affecting children, but affecting them permanently, until pollution controls reduced lead levels. See:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/07/AR2007070701073.html
3)There is the Levitt theory that legalized abortion reduced the number of unwanted children. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalized_abortion_and_crime_effect This one is very controversial. Obviously, it steps on a lot of political toes on both sides, but there have also been a lot of detailed methodological critiques. Haven’t followed it all myself, so I have no opinion, but it is another hypothesis that some find compelling.
4)I also mentioned that we seem to be getting better at catching criminals. This makes sense, given the new technology developed for this purpose (video cams, DNA tests, etc.). The risk/benefit calculation of a crime would have to include likelihood of getting caught as least as much as perceived likely sentence (the difference between 10 and 15 years is likely to seem pretty abstract; the difference between getting caught and getting away with it, not so much)
Now if you can take apart these theories, go ahead. I’m skeptical of any monocausal explanation anyway. Longer sentences may even have been a factor too. But none of this is handwaving.

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ajay 06.07.11 at 10:27 am

The risk/benefit calculation of a crime would have to include likelihood of getting caught as least as much as perceived likely sentence

IIRC increased likelihood of being caught actually has a much greater effect than proportionately increased sentencing, which makes intuitive sense…

100

someguy 06.07.11 at 3:24 pm

Martin Bento,

BS. I haven’t changed anything. I could very clear see that crime peaked in mid 80s 90 region the first time I looked at the numbers.

1980ish would give me plenty of room. 1989 is 1980ish.

But instead of playing debating games ,I took the time to look at the numbers, and see that the crime rate to incaceration numbers first jump in 1982. I then had the courtsey to inform you of those numbers and concede that this was a pretty big lag.

High school drop out rates

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0779196.html

Very weak.

Lead? Please.

Levitt. There is probably a decent amount of truth is his assertion. What happens if you adjust for single parent families? His assertion is still true but the crime rate percentage decrease due to abortion would be much less.

You are throwing stuff against the wall and not even bothering to see if something sticks. You couldn’t be bothered to even take 5 seconds and look at high school drop rates.

I have never claimed and that increased incarceration was the monocasaul of decreased crime rates.

People behind bars mug less. The people who want to let out muggers need to prove they don’t. End of story.

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Lemuel Pitkin 06.07.11 at 3:50 pm

Martin Bento-

There are many examples of prison sentences being shortened because of public campaigns focused on the injustice, as well as the expense, of incarceration for e.g. nonviolent drug crimes. I worked myself a few years ago on such a campaign in New York State, which resulted in the steep reduction, and later elimination, of the mandatory minimum sentences for possession of modest quantities of drugs. Cannabis decriminalization is proceeding around the world. Looking further back, it’s only a few decades since Massachusetts closed down its whole juvenile detention system, and the country as a whole largely eliminated involuntary commitment to mental hospitals — a quasi-carceral system that was of the same order of magnitude as the prison system itself.

There is a long list of victories in the fight against mass incarceration. Of course much more is needed, but has been won, as been won through a combination of rational argument on the basis of justice and humanity, and political organizing by the victims of the system. Nothing has been won by accepting the premise that “criminals” are bad people who need to suffer, and then looking for more cost-effective ways to hurt them.

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Lemuel Pitkin 06.07.11 at 3:52 pm

That should be:

what has been won, has been won through a combination of rational argument on the basis of justice and humanity, and political organizing by the victims of the system.

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BobbyV 06.07.11 at 4:26 pm

Black Americans are jailed at the rate of three thousand per hundred thousand whereas South Africa managed to preserve apartheid by imprisoning 729 black males per 100,000.
Paul Kennedy, “Preparing for the Twenty-first Century.”

Our prison system has become an obscene menage a deux of racial injustice and profits-over-performance corporatism. Non-violent offenders enter this hell but too many exit having experienced random violence as a component of daily existence.

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Glen Tomkins 06.08.11 at 5:01 am

Martin Bento,

I would never propose anything with the idea that it has anything so grand as a moral basis behind it. When I hear such propositions, I reflexively check to make sure my wallet is secure.

I just think we should always try to be bit less stupid than the last century, show a bit more enlightened self-interest, and I wouldn’t aim at trying to get society to adapt any new way of treating crime and criminals on the basis of any moral theories more ambitious than that. That’s the sort of idealistic approach that got us doing penitentiaries a century and a half ago, and I think that hasn’t turned out at all well, it hasn’t been even a modest and gradual move away from stupid and blind retribution.

We didn’t start doing any sort of intervention as a society to respond to private thefts and murders and so forth out of any idea of imposing moral order. We had this very practical problem that if wider society did nothing when one person killed another, that person’s friends and family would do something about it, and that something would set off a cycle of retribution that could be counted on to escalate, and the resulting feud would do far more damage all around than the original wrong. So wider society started providing an orderly substitute for private retribution. Yes, there would be more damage spread around by this criminal justice system to add to the original crime, but it would hopefully be less in amount and more proportional (Only a tooth for tooth, just one eye for one eye! That was an advance in its day.) than what private justice would exact, and would definitely tend to limit any damage to one initial round, because the state would take responsibility for whatever damage had to be done to the criminal, it wouldn’t be the doing of the victim’s family.

The most we can aim for is a system that tries, as much as possible, to make the consequences that have to be imposed on the criminal to keep victims satisfied that they don’t have to undertake private retribution, not damage the criminal’s ability to get on with a life that does not depend on repeating and continuing the crimes for which they were convicted. That’s just enlightened self-interest. The level of fines should not be vindictive, or retributive in the sense of done to exact retribution or revenge, designed to make it impossible to be paid without privation, or even “merely” demeaning limitations in the life of the criminal. I can’t conceive of any sort of penalty to make a criminal pay, that would achieve the end of obtaining an acknowledgement that he or she has done something whose repetition will not be tolerated, that could be done with less damage to that person than merely making them fork over some money. That’s no more “theft” than making people pay taxes, which we do when there is not even a question of retribution except in the minds of Randroids.

And if there is no cooperation from the criminal with this sort of penalty, if he or she does not honor the promise to not offend again that society should make them give upon conviction in exchange for commuting the death sentence we would have for all felonies, I don’t see any alternative to the death penalty. Again, society should forebear over and over again, to and beyond the point of endangering the rest of us, to avoid doing this to even the worst criminal. It should try every other remedy likely to avoid the final necessity (and I object to incarceration and corporal punishment because I think they tend to bring that final necessity nearer, rather than help reform and reconstruct a potential sociopath). I don’t object to you calling that murder, any more than I object to calling all the killing in war “murder”. No one should feel a clean conscience about killing under any circumstance. It should only be done if it pretty clearly is the alternative that will result in less killing overall. I don’t think that capital punishment as currently practiced in this country meets that standard, but that doesn’t mean that capital punishment could never meet that standard.

105

rouseanne 06.08.11 at 11:52 am

The most convincing explanation I’ve seen for a fall in serious US crime rates over recent decades is the demographic one: ie, that it’s due to an aging population.

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chris 06.08.11 at 1:34 pm

You don’t get to do without a lag if your theory requires it, and then toss a lag in when the data doesn’t fall where you thought it would.

Hmm, this sounds a bit like “no fair adjusting your theory to fit the facts”. But of course that’s exactly what you *should* do — you just shouldn’t claim that the adjusted theory’s fit to the facts is a vindication of the original theory.

the country as a whole largely eliminated involuntary commitment to mental hospitals—a quasi-carceral system that was of the same order of magnitude as the prison system itself

Incidentally: how much evidence is their for or against the theory that lots of people just flowed from one system to the other? Obviously if a lot of our “criminal” class is actually mentally ill, the prospect of changing their behavior through rational incentive structures is dim. Maybe some mostly-rational people are too quick to assume that others think like they do? Criminals, practically by definition, act differently from the majority. It sometimes seems to me that not enough attention is paid to the possibility that they also think differently.

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belle le triste 06.08.11 at 1:37 pm

You can’t have penology without phrenology

108

JJ 06.08.11 at 3:25 pm

One hundred comments into the debate and no one is willing to concede that a population with the widest access to abortion is least likely to raise unwanted children?

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nick s 06.08.11 at 4:36 pm

how much evidence is their for or against the theory that lots of people just flowed from one system to the other?

Just look at the state employment rolls, and you’ll find that there are nearly as many mental health professionals employed by the corrections department as there are by health and human services. The three institutions in the US with the largest population of the mentally ill are not hospitals: they’re jails.

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roy belmont 06.08.11 at 10:01 pm

An invisible factor in the whole incarcerama cess pool is the massive proliferation of CCTV cam/interface. Specially the interface. Lots of eyeballs everywhere now, and most of them all sub rosaish.
The lower depths of society are no longer operating in the dark.
All is illuminated. By real reality tv. Thus causing major subsidences in certain kinds of criminal activities.
While the crime of the prison system – supported by a depraved and constantly degrading public morality, which is almost entirely mediated now – chugs along on its merry way.

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Martin Bento 06.09.11 at 11:39 am

someguy, if 1989 is 1980ish, so is 1971. If 1991, the actual year you claimed, is 1980ish, 1969 is just as 1980ish. So you want so much leeway in your claims, that events occurring anytime from 1969 – 1991 can be considered simultaneous for the purpose of claiming a correlation with another event. If we were talking geologic events that might be valid, but we are not. A lot happened between 1969-1991, and if you are going to try to interconnect bits of it, you’re going to need a shorter “now” than 22 years. What you are calling “debating games” are otherwise known as reasoned argument and evidentiary standards, and I agree that you are refraining from them.

And your refutation of the lead theory is that you can type the word “please”? Please. This is a theory that has been through peer-review, that is based on hard science, and that fits with the data in several countries, not just one. The only actual argument that I have seen against it is that it cannot explain the decrease in serious crime from the 30’s to the 50’s, which isn’t really an objection, since Nevin is not claiming that lead explains every fluctuation in crime in history, and there is no reason all historical changes in the crime rate should have the same cause. Since the period from The Depression to the 50’s is likely the greatest 2 decade increase in general prosperity in US history, that fewer people took the Bonnie N Clyde career path should be a quite miniscule shock. BTW, even Levitt cites approvingly the Reyes study, which confirms the lead thesis, but also finds an abortion effect.

Then there’s this:

“People behind bars mug less. The people who want to let out muggers need to prove they don’t. End of story.”

End of story? So you are not claiming a deterrent effect, then, only the direct effect of incarceration on the incarcerated. If this is so, why did you bring up the risk/reward calculations of criminals. Why did you speak of culture/habits? I stated in #96 that I have no doubt there is a reduction stemming directly from the isolation of criminals, I just didn’t think it was a big part of the overall crime reduction. If you are claiming it is, you can’t just point to a decrease in crime coinciding with an increase in incarceration, give or take a decade or so. You need to show that the decrease is approximately equal to what the incarcerated would have committed during their time in prison had they been released as specified under the older standards. The decrease is pretty big, so you have your work cut out. The decline in crime by minors is going to be particularly challenging I expect. One of the reasons I’m skeptical that the direct effect of long incarceration is a major factor is that you would expect this effect to show up very little in the young, only a small percentage of whom would yet be facing long incarceration and none of whom could have been incarcerated for more than a few years, and then to increase with age, up to at least middle age. In fact, we see the opposite. Crimes by youth have plummeted and not because they have been in prison 15 years. Crimes by the middle-aged have increased considerably since the 60’s and 70’s.

You also wrote this:

“Levitt. There is probably a decent amount of truth is his assertion. What happens if you adjust for single parent families? His assertion is still true but the crime rate percentage decrease due to abortion would be much less.”

Really? Given that single-parent families have increased and crime decreased during the period Levitt examines, you must be claiming that an increase in single-parent families has contributed to the decrease in crime. If we hold that 50% of the decrease in crime is attributable to abortion without looking at single-parent families, then take increase of single-parent families into account and find that “much less”, say 20%, is so attributable, increase of single-parent families must account for the other 30%. Do you have evidence that supports the notion that children of single-parent households are less inclined to crime? I find that rather surprising.

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Martin Bento 06.09.11 at 11:39 am

lemuel, yes, there have been some victories, but there have been many campaigns going the other way, and that is clearly and strongly where the net victories have been in recent decades, or we wouldn’t be having this discussion. In any struggle, you are unlikely to lose every battle; that does not mean you are winning the war or can win it using the same means that have failed you, on average, heretofore. Marijuana may be an exception. Despite a level of elite hostility that itself bears examining, the momentum on that seems to be moving towards decriminalization. This is not conclusive. At one time, momentum was on the side of the ERA. We still have no ERA, and it is no longer an active issue (though arguably its important effects have been achieved by other means). More recently, momentum was on the side of cap and trade. Not now, though it could change again. Nonetheless, at this point, it looks like continued weakening of the marijuana laws is the way to bet. Weakening of criminal law in general is quite another story. And I think we need to go quite a ways here. We cannot be socializing people to become hardened criminals, so I think the reductions in incarceration we need are pretty dramatic, for all but the most dangerous and irredeemable criminals. I don’t see simple advocacy getting us there for the foreseeable.

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Martin Bento 06.09.11 at 11:40 am

Glen, OK, let’s leave aside moral frameworks and just look at it practically. A lot of serious criminals are behaving compulsively. Rapists, for example. What should we do about them? I doubt fines will be very effective, since compulsive behaviors drive people to penury all the time. So do we just forbear and tolerate a lot of rape? I don’t think that’s fair to the victims. And when we tire of forbearance, do we then execute the guy? It seems to me this system can’t help but lead to much more execution. For one thing, as in this example, it will lead to execution for lesser and more common crimes than murder. But it will also be inferior to the status quo at preventing such crimes. It’s true that your proposal avoids the “criminal hardening” that goes on in prison, but so does CP. I agree that the long-term psychological harm of prison is a good reason to seek an alternative. What long-term psychological damage is likely from CP? Well, if you look at people who endure extreme pain – major car accidents, nearly drowning, losing a limb – the experience of the pain does not seem to cause lasting damage (assuming no brain damage, disfigurement, etc.), save, perhaps, a phobia of the cause or context of the pain. Such a phobia might be effective at modifying behavior, so in a CP context could be considered a feature, not a bug.

BTW, I agree that fines are “no more theft” than taxes, but what I said is that “done outside the state”, they would be theft and the same holds for taxes. If I tried to impose and enforce a tax on you, I could call it a “tax”, but it would be theft.

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Martin Bento 06.09.11 at 11:41 am

Chris, if the main evidence you’re citing for your position is a correlation in time, being able to adjust that liberally to fit the actual data leaves no real test of your position. And you notice he didn’t say “I am adjusting my position because the data invalidated my previous one, and I can justify the change within my framework thus”. Rather, he claimed he was not changing his position, and that a decade more or less made no difference. Note he did the same thing when sg claimed that certain cohorts increased their crime relative to previous cohorts at the same age, even in the face of increased incarceration. First he said, of course, they did, which is exactly what you’d expect: they got socialized to high levels of tolerance when young and the effects of that were sustained despite changing conditions. Then he looked at the data and concluded that sg’s assertion was wrong. So then he claimed all the cohorts moved together and seemed to somehow find this, too, consistent with his position. It seems to me he’s adjusting his claims and standards so that the data will fit them no matter what.

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Roger 06.09.11 at 12:31 pm

The logic is monstrously simple.

Even a short incarceration carries a very high risk of being subjected to what in any other context would be regarded as prolonged torture and the most extreme degradation at the hands (and other organs) of ones fellow prisoners.

Faced with a choice of being flogged in strictly controlled circumstances and being savagely beaten and then gang raped by White Supremacists (or whatever other form of low life you most fear and despise) with great regularity for years any sane person would choose the flogging.

So that’s one of the key ideas from Starship Troopers being seriously proposed – all we need now are liberal arguments for capital punishment and for restricting the vote to military veterans (or conscription which is to my mind a more equitable or at least egalitarian way of achieving the same end and was once a commonplace in Socialist Party programmes) and we’ll be well on the way to Heinlein’s utopia…

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someguy 06.09.11 at 4:15 pm

Martin Bento,

I said that instead of disproving my assertion sg’s idea actually supported it and explained how. But that doesn’t mean if sg’s idea was wrong it would disprove my assertion. Again here I too the time to re-examine sg’s claim, to look at the data, and see what it said.

That I didn’t immediately scream I expect a lag doesn’t mean I changed my mind and inserted a lag as a prerequisite after I looked at the data. It just means I didn’t mention.

A 9 year lag is a long lag.

So, I have actually found some ok data and I am hoping to expand my horizons with it. Maybe I am wrong. I hope to look at the data and see. You couldn’t be bothered to take the 5 seconds to look up high school drop out rates.

http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/06/08/freakonomics-quorum-why-during-a-bad-economy-does-crime-continue-to-fall/

“We spent an entire chapter in Freakonomics exploring the factors that do and do not seem to have brought down the rate of violent crime in the U.S. In short, factors that matter include: number of police; number of prisoners; changes in drug markets; and the availability of abortion. And those that don’t seem to much matter: the economy; innovative policing strategies; most gun laws; capital punishment; and demographics.”

That is from an authority you cited.

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Martin Bento 06.09.11 at 8:09 pm

The quote is from an authority I mentioned but didn’t endorse. Levitt and Dubner have been caught being sloppy with statistics. Here’s what I said:

“This one is very controversial. Obviously, it steps on a lot of political toes on both sides, but there have also been a lot of detailed methodological critiques. Haven’t followed it all myself, so I have no opinion, but it is another hypothesis that some find compelling.”

As for looking up high school dropout rates, well, you’ve made some assertions that you haven’t bothered to cite data for either. For example, the contribution of single-parent families to the decrease in crime.

As for sg’s assertion, you did say it supported your theory. Removing it, therefore, would not necessarily amount to disproof, but it would amount to reduction of support.

In any case, I do apologize for the tone of my previous comment. I didn’t mean to come off so hostile. As I’ve said before, there may be something to what you are claiming, but there are other explanations, and it is not clear to me that yours is the best.

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chris 06.09.11 at 8:30 pm

Rapists, for example. What should we do about them?

I wish I knew. But if they really are an example of compulsive behavior, then that seems like a pretty good case for keeping them locked up (and away from other prisoners except for supervised interactions, too, I guess).

At the time when the offender has an actual opportunity to reoffend, the prospect of arrest, let alone conviction and sentence, is surely going to be too remote to affect the decision.

A more promising approach IMO is going to be trying to prevent the conditions where they think they can get away with it.

119

Martin Bento 06.10.11 at 1:29 am

Chris, first of all, I don’t think compulsion is an all-or-nothing affair. Just because someone cannot be dissuaded by fines does not mean he cannot be dissuaded by anything. People speed all the time. If the punishment was time or pain rather than money, I bet that would decrease.

Once you start putting people in prison not for what they have done, but for what you think they might do, you are in the realm of Minority Report. Statistically, someone who has committed a serious crime in the past is more likely to repeat it than some random person, sure. But there are many other factors that make one statistically more likely to commit a crime: race, class, low IQ, education level, history of crime in family, cumulative lead contamination, unstable family life, perhaps the presence of certain genes – should a person who has a high likelihood of committing a crime based on such factors be imprisoned? Do you want to limit it to repeat offenders? OK. Take two people Jamal and Rick, who have committed a comparable offense. For Jamal, it is the first offense, and for Rick, it is the second. Suppose second offenders are 30% more likely to commit another offense than first offenders. But Jamal is black, poor, has a low IQ, and his father was a multiple felon, whereas Rick is white, rich, bright, and from a nice family. Suppose these factors combined mean that, statistically, Jamal is actually 20% more likely to offend again than Rick. If you are really protecting the public based on likelihood of re-offense, Jamal should get a longer sentence than Rick. I take it you would not actually advocate this, and I wouldn’t either. But if you don’t, you are imposing an extra penalty on Rick for the sake of protecting the public, while actually endangering the public, relative to the contrary course. The truth is that you don’t know in any particular case whether someone will offend again, and no one should be imprisoned because they match a statistical profile. The only bright line you can draw is that people get punished for what they have done, not for what they might do. I’m not saying escalating sentences for repeat offenders are unjustifiable. They can be justified as upping the deterrent ante, but not as preventative detention.

In practice, this gets muddy, as one can declare or perceive various things as the “reason” for a particular punishment. One thing that worries me is that preventative detention does seem to me what we are actually doing to a degree (I hear partial vindication of this when people say that our crime rate has declined because we are keeping our criminals locked up so much longer, effectively defending incarceration as preventative detention. I repeat: if this were a major factor, one would expect to see great reduction in crime among the middle aged, and little to none among the young; we see the reverse) ISTM the premise of 3 strikes and suchlike things is to say that people who repeatedly commit crimes, even if the crimes themselves are not that serious, are statistically more likely to continue committing crimes, including more serious ones. Therefore, they should be locked up indefinitely, or at least until they are too old to be a problem. Mandatory minimums remove the judge’s ability to look at particular cases, demanding that all be judged by statistically average evaluations of culpability. And a look at the prison population suggests rather strongly that demographic factors like race and class are getting rather dramatically factored in.

I would point out that many countries in the world have a lower violent crime rate than the US, and all have a lower (save for a few police states, much lower) incarceration rate. Empirically speaking, it is possible to do it; in fact, it is commonplace.

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