
The Caging of America - davux
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/01/30/120130crat_atlarge_gopnik?currentPage=all
======
cullenking
A close family member of mine was just arrested for possession of marijuana.
They allegedly had a sizable amount, more than your normal 1/8th of an ounce,
but nothing obscene. Due to a felony 10 years ago when they were a teen, they
are looking at 5-10 years. Granted, Oregon is known to go easy on pot
offenses, however even 6 months in jail is ridiculous. The real cost however,
is not having their prior felony expunged - it will be another 10 years before
that is a possibility, well into middle age for this person :( Try finding
yourself a job with a felony record. If you can, it is probably paying a wage
that will doubtless encourage the same illegal behavior that landed you a
felony in the first place. When your only hope the rest of your life won't be
utter shit is getting off on a technicality, something is messed up.

~~~
thematt
How will his wage _doubtlessly encourage_ him to engage in illegal behavior?
I've worked plenty of overtime and minimum wage jobs and at no point did that
ever cause me to consider committing a felony or engaging in illegal behavior.
Your friend sounds like he's in the situation he's in because of _choices_ he
made, not because society did something wrong.

~~~
rbanffy
It's a bit more complicated than that - when someone works under unjust
conditions to make ends meet _because_ of a law perceived to be unjust, the
commitment towards respecting other laws is lessened.

------
tokenadult
Other comments asked how incarceration rates could be reduced in the United
States. One way would be for many of the forty-some other states to follow the
example of the few states, including Minnesota, which have set up determinate
sentencing based on severity of the offense of conviction and the criminal
history of the convicted defendant.

[http://www.northfieldnews.com/content/understanding-
minnesot...](http://www.northfieldnews.com/content/understanding-minnesotas-
determinate-sentencing-guidelines)

<http://www.doc.state.mn.us/crimevictim/terms.htm>

I toured a prison in Minnesota in the mid-1980s, as an interpreter for an
official visitor from another country. The visitor was amazed to learn that
Minnesota then (and now) spends LESS per taxpayer on putting convicted
criminals into prison, while spending substantially MORE per prisoner. Only
the most serious criminals with long histories of offenses are imprisoned.
Most convicted criminals receive sentences that involve community corrections
but not imprisonment. Minnesota's maximum-security prison, the one I toured,
had a population of inmates 97 percent of whom had killed at least one other
human being before being put in that prison. The foreign visitor was a human
rights lawyer, and he was actually amazed at how humanely the prisoners were
housed and treated in that prison. (He had visited many prisons in his own
country, and none were as well funded as the prison in Minnesota.) A prison
can be properly staffed and funded, and not too crowded, if a whole state's
criminal justice system is geared toward imprisoning only persons who must be
kept out of general society, responding to most forms of criminal behavior
with sentences that don't include prison time.

~~~
moldbug
But what if our system is actually erring in the _other_ direction?

There are undoubtedly quite a few Americans who are in correctional
supervision but shouldn't be. There are also quite a few Americans who should
be in correctional supervision, but aren't. (For a bare start, suppose we
believe the commonly quoted meme that there are 1 million gang members in
America.)

In either case, I think the most basic question is: why are there so many
criminals? What about the present-day American system of government is so
amazingly criminogenic?

For instance, one commonly quoted "root cause" is our proverbial callousness
to important issues of social justice. Is an absence of social justice the
problem? Let's consider some evidence.

Robbery is a pretty good "index crime." For instance, in 1900, there was about
1 robbery per day in all of England (source:
[http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons/lib/research/rp99...](http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons/lib/research/rp99/rp99-111.pdf)).
This is roughly a factor of 35 lower than current reported crime rates (same
source) in the ol' Sceptered Island - assuming you trust HMG's statistics. And
all crime statistics in all countries everywhere are generally admitted by all
informed observers to be utterly buggered to hell. (example:
[http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-05-04/news/the-nypd-
tapes-i...](http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-05-04/news/the-nypd-tapes-inside-
bed-stuy-s-81st-precinct/))

In any case, you may compare the public concern for social justice in England,
in 1900 and 2000, and note precisely the reverse of the correlation predicted
by the hypothesis.

Japan has extremely low crime as well, and is probably the least Americanized
of all First World nations today. Clearly, it is physically possible for the
State to eradicate crime. Clearly, the American system of government, at home
or abroad, seems to carry with it unusually high levels of crime and disorder,
at least by historical First World standards.

But why? If what we need isn't more social justice, what is it?

(edit: I just checked and this parliament.co.uk link isn't the right one for
my robbery numbers - I'll have to look. Still, money graf - "The number of
indictable offences per thousand population in 1900 was 2.4 and in 1997 the
figure was 89.1." Two orders of magnitude any way you slice it.)

~~~
phillmv
This is why you are being downvoted:

You ask two unrelated question to which you provide no proof.

>But what if our system is actually erring in the other direction?

Okay. _How_? Every other nation on earth has lower incarceration rates, and a
fair number of them are safer than the US.

So given that that are still criminals on the outside, the answer is that you
need to become more efficient at apprehending the right people - not increase
incarceration rates.

>I think the most basic question is: why are there so many criminals? What
about the present-day American system of government is so amazingly
criminogenic?

Criminals break laws; laws are often injust. The War on Drugs, and mandatory
sentencing.

>If what we need isn't more social justice, what is it?

This is entirely unsubstantiated by anything you wrote preceding this
sentence. Frankly, it's kind of confused.

~~~
moldbug
Perhaps someone else can parse this better than me.

I can make sense of one of these lines: "Criminals break laws; laws are often
injust. The War on Drugs, and mandatory sentencing." I think behind this line
is lurking the belief that America's prisons are full of Humboldt County
potheads, or something like that.

The typical American in jail for drug offenses isn't a system administrator
who made the mistake of toking up one night. It's a gang member whose real
offense is being a worthless thug. The prosecutors and LEOs who busted him are
experts in the technical details of putting worthless thugs in jail, to the
extent that this remains possible.

Nonetheless, all major American cities retain a very substantial population of
worthless thugs. If you're unaware of this reality, I strongly recommend this
Chicago cop blog: <http://secondcitycop.blogspot.com/>. Or you could watch
"The Wire" - I hear it's available on DVD.

Last month, my wife and daughter were leaving a child's birthday party in the
outer Mission, SF, when bullets flew down the street past them, followed by a
worthless thug who ran past them gun in hand. You can argue that Bayshore
Blvd. is a lousy place to put a space that hosts children's birthday parties,
and I'd agree. Still, it's my country - why shouldn't I feel safe in it,
anywhere, day or night?

~~~
rdixit
"worthless thug" has some pretty racist overtones. I'll make to watch more of
The Wire to get real info on the causes of crime in America.

~~~
fractallyte
Huh? _Racist?!_

Do you mean racist by reference to the etymology of the word 'thug'
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuggee>)?

That's a pretty obscure use of the 'race card'...

~~~
jbooth
Are you feigning ignorance here or did you actually think the original
comment's repeated pejorative of 'worthless thugs' was talking about white
people?

~~~
moldbug
Not in San Francisco, but there are plenty of white "worthless thugs." See
under: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chav>. The American equivalent starts
around 80 miles east of here and doesn't let up until Westchester County - I
exaggerate, slightly. See under: "Winter's Bone."

~~~
jbooth
Except people don't casually malign them as "thugs". "Rednecks", maybe. In the
context of the original comment, there was definitely a racial component and
liberal use of the word "worthless".

You can dispute whether that's racist, maybe, but being shocked at the
suggestion? It quite clearly has a racial element.

------
Nate75Sanders
I admit I've only skimmed the article and the comments on HN, but I don't
think that either have mentioned the CCPOA (California Correctional Peace
Officers Association). It's basically a union of prison guards who are heavily
pro-incarceration. The quick version is that stricter laws produce more
prisoners which leads to more money for prison guards and their organization.
The story is better told here:

[http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2011/06/05/the-role-of-
th...](http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2011/06/05/the-role-of-the-prison-
guards-union-in-californias-troubled-prison-system/)

The phrase "prison-industrial complex" leads to some interesting reading, as
well.

~~~
scrod
Private prison companies such as Wackenhut stand to profit in the billions
from increased rates of incarceration. There is absolutely _no question_ about
who benefits the most. Please take your blatant anti-worker agenda and shove
it.

~~~
jvm
How does that fact make parent's point untrue? He never said the workers stood
to benefit 'more' than Wackenhut; it's not clear what that would even mean.
Clearly both the unions and the contractors both are in favor of increased
incarceration, that's not very surprising.

~~~
scrod
It makes his point irrelevant; those workers' interests pale in comparison to
that of the owning interests of those corporations. He presents unions as the
sole cause of the problem, which is not only intellectually deceitful, but
_quite incorrect_. More importantly, it reveals an underlying agenda that
needs to be challenged as strongly as possible in civic discourse.

In fact, private prisons and unionized guards aren't even on the same _side_ ,
due to the former hiring largely non-union labor. And the private prison
industry has been growing and lobbying faster than ever:

[http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/09/26/328486/us-
privat...](http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/09/26/328486/us-private-
prison-population-lobbying/?mobile=nc)

~~~
namdnay
" He presents unions as the sole cause of the problem" - When did he do that?

~~~
scrod
When he posted a comment _in which he said essentially that_ , and in which he
referenced a one-sided article that goes to extreme lengths to attack blue
collar workers' retirement plans and their own collective efforts at bettering
their economic self-interest.

The point should be clear as day by now; if you can't extract the basic
message and argument from his comment then you have no basis for inserting
yourself into the debate. Please don't waste any more of my time.

~~~
Nate75Sanders
This was not my basic message at all.

I'm here telling you this right now.

They are a special interest group that promotes incarceration. There are
others, as well.

People are far more aware of private prisons than they are prison guard
unions. I've known nasty things about private prisons for 10+ years. I found
out about CCOPA and other similar entities in the past 1-2.

As stated earlier, I was simply presenting something that I figured people
here likely hadn't seen.

You're too emotional to reason with, I'm afraid.

I'm done.

------
jacquesm
6 million people is roughly the working age population of some of the smaller
countries in Western Europe. Thinking about the massive waste of resources and
the cost in terms of human lives extinguished (6 million people in prison
translates to ~85,000 peoples lives wiped out every year, and that's only the
inmates not the guards and whoever else is involved in the system) is
instantly depressing.

Gruesome.

Here is a good graphic to illustrate how bad it really is:

[http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/04/22/us/20080423_PR...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/04/22/us/20080423_PRISON_GRAPHIC.html)

~~~
jerf
One should probably subtract off a more average incarceration rate first.
There is, alas, a subset of people who are behind bars because if they aren't,
they truly will net an even _larger_ loss to society.

~~~
smokeyj
I wonder how many non-violent criminals are arrested for every 'truly
dangerous' menace to society.

~~~
jonnathanson
From what I've read and heard, one of the biggest contributions to prison
population growth has been the advent of the predicate felony ("three-
strikes") laws in recent decades. These days, incarceration is like
compounding interest. Get locked up once, and the next time you so much as
look the wrong way at the wrong time, you're back in prison serving an even
more severe sentence. In this way, someone with a string of nonviolent
offenses does the same time as a violent criminal.

Prisons also serve to harden the imprisoned -- helping to ensure our country's
record-high recidivism rates. Prison conditions are brutal. Gangs run daily
life, and failure to join a gang can mean rape, severe injury, or even death.
Of course, joining a prison gang means an indoctrination into the world of
hard-core violence and reprisal. It's pretty hard to go to prison a relatively
nonviolent person and emerge the same way.

Another big trend over the last 30-odd years has been a marked shift in
society's -- and our justice system's -- philosophical view of the prison
itself. Many years ago, prisons were seen as places to reform criminals -- not
just to lock them away for a certain number of years, but to adapt them to a
successful return to society upon completion of those years. These days,
reform and adaptation aren't on the agenda. (Hell, good luck trying to find a
stable job in post-release society with a conviction on your record). Modern
prison is purely about locking people away and treating them as hopeless
causes. More often than not, that hopelessness becomes a self-fulfilling
prophecy.

To be fair, some people in our society really are lost causes. There are
violent psychopaths rotting in prison who should probably stay there and rot.
But today's criminal justice system paints all offenders with that brush.
Perhaps I'm a softie, but I choose to believe that a significant fraction of
the 6 million is not beyond redemption.

~~~
anamax
> From what I've read and heard, one of the biggest contributions to prison
> population growth has been the advent of the predicate felony ("three-
> strikes") laws in recent decades.

Actually, three-strikes laws and the like aren't new, they're returning. They
were abolished in the 60s.

------
rayiner
Before I went to law school, I had a somewhat conservative view of the justice
system (they deserve to be in there!) But the more you learn about the prison
system in the U.S. the harder it is to see it as anything other than a crime
in and of itself.

D.A.'s being elected officials, try to railroad people accused of crimes to
get them in jail. Legislatures looking to be "tough on crime" have jacked up
the penalties for offenses to ridiculous levels, so much so that most people
would be foolish to take their chances at trial instead of pleading guilty in
exchange for a lesser sentence. Forensic "science" is anything but, with error
rates in finger printing being in the 7-8% neighborhood and rising from there.
Handwriting, hair samples, and bite mark analysis have error rates in the
40-60% range.

As the article mentions, the system elevates procedure above everything else.
If you have a busy, poorly-paid public defender who doesn't present any
evidence in your case and actually argues in favor of the death penalty in the
sentencing hearing (a real example) the Supreme Court has no sympathy for you
if that attorney also forfeits an avenue for post-conviction relief by failing
to make a particular argument at the right time.

------
m0th87
The article makes the good point that reform won't happen with one piece of
sweeping legislation, but rather with patchwork improvements to the system.

What would you do to reduce incarceration rates?

I would start with a reform of drug laws inspired by Portugal [1]. We're not
sure if the same solution can scale to the size of the US, but we can
introduce reform incrementally, starting with the decriminalization of
Marijuana. (Which I think most would find agreeable.)

Education reform is important too. Obama is pushing reform to get states to
increase the age of required education to 18 [2]. This sounds like a good idea
on paper...we'll have to see how it pans out. His push for increase
utilization of community colleges also makes sense, since they provide a
decent education for the increasing number of Americans who can't afford
college.

1: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal> 2:
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-
sheet/post/obama-...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-
sheet/post/obama-states-should-require-kids-stay-in-school-until-18-or-
graduation/2012/01/24/gIQAPg63OQ_blog.html)

~~~
dantheman
I think that removing the power of prison guard unions is something that will
need to be addressed first.

Fore example:

Correction officers’ unions are powerful forces in states like California and
New York; they push for the construction of more prisons and for longer
sentences for criminals (so that there are more people for correction officers
to guard). Their activities in California are a case in point. In the last
eight years they have spent $10 million on state politics — either in direct
contributions to politicians or in spending on ballot initiatives relating to
crime and punishment. They have mounted full-scale political campaigns. For
instance, the California corrections union has attacked public officials, such
as the Los Angeles district attorney, who supported an alternative to the
union-favored “three-strikes law.” Indeed, Supreme Court Justice Anthony
Kennedy in February of this year noted that “the three-strikes law sponsor is
the correctional officers’ union and that is sick!” In 1999 the union even
successfully opposed a proposal to permit the California attorney general to
prosecute brutality in prisons.

[http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-
review/article/432...](http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-
review/article/43266)

~~~
3am
<http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=CXW>

------
mcantelon
The fundamental problem is that there is a whole industry, and corresponding
political lobby, built on incarcerating people.

~~~
samstave
I nthe land of the free, there is an entire industry built around destroying
freedom.

Fuck the prison industry. Every single politician who cohorts with the prison
lobby should be called out and shot.

Yes. Shot.

~~~
nodemaker
Ironically, shooting people is one of the activities that freedom is taken
away for.

------
pshc
_Crime ends as a result of “cyclical forces operating on situational and
contingent things rather than from finding deeply motivated essential
linkages.” [...] Curbing crime does not depend on reversing social pathologies
or alleviating social grievances; it depends on erecting small, annoying
barriers to entry._

Funny how this comes up again and again in so many different contexts. Minor
bottom-up tweaks are more effective than top-down policies. In one of Joel's
classic articles he talks about how small UI tweaks to forum software
completely change the course of a community. Tiny changes in economic
incentives have massive effects. It's a great lesson to be applied in so many
fields.

------
DanBC
One problem with putting so many people in prison, and keeping them there for
so long, is that you end up with a large number of prisoners with dementia
like illnesses.

The routines of prison help to mask some symptoms of those illnesses. And
because some of these prisoners are in for serious, violent, crimes it's hard
to release them to nursing homes.

Here's one prison's response:

([http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/health/dealing-with-
dement...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/health/dealing-with-dementia-
among-aging-criminals.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all))

I submitted it to HN here: (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3649276>)

------
twoodfin
_By “supply side criminology,” he means the conservative theory of crime that
claimed that social circumstances produced a certain net amount of crime
waiting to be expressed; if you stopped it here, it broke out there. The only
way to stop crime was to lock up all the potential criminals._

Very odd to describe this as a "conservative" idea. Most conservatives I know
object to this sort of sociological determinism, instead embracing the idea of
individual responsibility. If anything, they believe in the power of (slowly)
malleable culture and institutions to shape outcomes, rather than accepting
bad outcomes as inevitable.

~~~
wmeredith
Unfortunately for most nowadays a conservative and a dogmatic neo-con are the
same thing. Only two parties, remember?

~~~
pyre
The 'con' in neo-con stands for 'conservative' (unless I'm horribly
misinformed). I'd say that it's less of a matter of 'there can be only two
parties,' then it is of them being associated with each other by trying to use
such a generic term to describe themselves.

------
MarkMc
Why don't prisons get their asses sued off for allowing inmates to be raped?

~~~
gwern
'Sovereign immunity' (states are liable only for what they choose to allow
themselves to be liable for), waivers for private prisoners, and probably some
sort of 'reasonable precaution' clause in liability legislation would be where
I would start looking for the reason why not.

~~~
InclinedPlane
I would file on civil rights grounds, that incarceration where rape is known
to be highly likely amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.

~~~
scott_w
However, that would fall into the trap mentioned in the article: that it's not
unusual.

~~~
vacri
Rape is an unusual form of punishment in that the courts never ask for it to
be applied.

------
dmg8
_The accelerating rate of incarceration over the past few decades is just as
startling as the number of people jailed: in 1980, there were about two
hundred and twenty people incarcerated for every hundred thousand Americans;
by 2010, the number had more than tripled, to seven hundred and thirty-one. No
other country even approaches that. In the past two decades, the money that
states spend on prisons has risen at six times the rate of spending on higher
education._

If the New York Times is to be believed, the crime rate has nearly halved
since 1980 [1]. Obviously it needn't follow that the increase in the prison
population caused this, but the author's unwillingness to even explore the
idea seems awfully incurious.

[1] See the "In the U.S." tab on this graphic
[http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/04/22/us/20080423_PR...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/04/22/us/20080423_PRISON_GRAPHIC.html)

~~~
ReadEvalPost
It's addressed on the second paragraph of page 5.

 _While the rest of the country, over the same twenty-year period, saw the
growth in incarceration that led to our current astonishing numbers, New York,
despite the Rockefeller drug laws, saw a marked decrease in its number of
inmates. “New York City, in the midst of a dramatic reduction in crime, is
locking up a much smaller number of people, and particularly of young people,
than it was at the height of the crime wave,” Zimring observes. Whatever
happened to make street crime fall, it had nothing to do with putting more men
in prison._

~~~
tlb
NYC is not insulated from the rest of the country, which did lock up
dramatically more people. As neighboring cities and states imprisoned large
numbers of people, it would have an effect on NYC street crime.

~~~
rhizome
That's the kind of Derridean approach to Criminal Justice that got us to where
we are now. You're saying the same thing, though: a cities crime rate is
entirely dependent on the policies of surrounding cities and not on itself.
Think about what you're suggesting: even if NYC experienced a crime drop while
also housing fewer inmates, it's only because their own policy was ineffectual
and the surrounding cities picked up the slack (or something).

~~~
tlb
Indeed, many policies work locally but not globally. Harassing criminals and
putting them on busses leaving town appears to work, but only locally.

Anyway, the story seems to say that since there was a period of time in which
NYC crime decreased while NYC incarcerations also decreased, the theory that
incarceration reduces crime is refuted. Hardly.

~~~
rhizome
I live in a city where people are said to commute in from the outer parts in
order to commit crimes, but the assertion is only ever backed up by anecdata.

~~~
ktizo
Yes, I've heard this as well, and it is absolutely terrible.

I am told that they are international in scope and go under the gang-sign of
'Bankers'.

------
Archio
This reminds me of an article Time Magazine did on Norway's Halden Prison.

Essentially, when the Norwegian justice system treated their inmates more
humanely, their recidivism (crime after prison) rate became 40% less than the
US and the UK.

Similarly, in Norway, there are only 69 inmates per 100,000 people, compared
to 753/100,000 in the United States.

[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1986002,00....](http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1986002,00.html)

------
feralchimp
_The normalization of prison rape—like eighteenth-century japery about
watching men struggle as they die on the gallows—will surely strike our
descendants as chillingly sadistic, incomprehensible on the part of people who
thought themselves civilized._

"Surely"? Let's start with "hopefully" and rigorously work our way up to
"probably."

------
ineedtosleep
Reminds me of an Econmist article from a while back [1]. The theme being
shared with the two being: systems we set up to punish _criminals_ rarely do
just that.

[1] <http://www.economist.com/node/14165460?story_id=14165460>

------
chefsurfing
Reading this reminds me of this quote: “You never change things by fighting
the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the
existing model obsolete.” - Buckminster Fuller

and another darker vision: "For if you [the rulers] suffer your people to be
ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then
punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them,
what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves
[outlaws] and then punish them." Sir Thomas More (1478-1535), Utopia, Book 1

Here's an idea for a frighteningly ambitions startup: Kill the prison-
industrial complex! How? Fight crime! It costs a lot of taxpayer money and
social wealth to keep things the way they are. Ostensibly the goal is to keep
people safe from criminals and reduce crime opportunities.

A friend of mine was mugged on the street for his iPhone last night. He was
stabbed in the leg when he fought back (mistake but he's ok thankfully). I
wonder if a few high-res web-cams on the street would have kept the attackers
at bay?

How about a Peer-to-Peer police/surveillance state? Found these startup ideas
tonight:

idea: turn my webcam into a security cam [1]
[http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-turn-my-webcam-into-
a-s...](http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-turn-my-webcam-into-a-security-
cam)

idea: millions of sensors / millions of surveys [2]
[http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-millions-of-sensors-
mil...](http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-millions-of-sensors-millions-of-
surveys)

~~~
rogerbinns
> How about a Peer-to-Peer police/surveillance state?

Britain has been doing the experiment for you and is generally regarded as the
most surveilled western society.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance#United_Kingdo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance#United_Kingdom)

Sensationalist article by the Daily Mail:

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1205607/Shock-
figure...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1205607/Shock-figures-
reveal-Britain-CCTV-camera-14-people--China.html)

Some articles on the resulting (in)effectiveness of having the cameras:

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/6082530/1000-CC...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/6082530/1000-CCTV-
cameras-to-solve-just-one-crime-Met-Police-admits.html)

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-
view/6083476/CC...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-
view/6083476/CCTV-cameras-If-they-do-not-stop-crime-or-catch-criminals-what-
are-they-for.html)

<http://www.library.ca.gov/CRB/97/05/crb97-005.pdf> (Warning: PDF)

~~~
ig1
News paper reports aren't peer reviewed scientific research.

How many journalists do you think even have a rigorous enough understanding of
statistics to even begin to be able to answer these sort of questions ?

Do you think before this data came out that the Telegraph or Daily Mail were
pro-CCTV ? - or do you think that they'd already decided their position long
before and were just looking for whatever data would back them up ?

~~~
rogerbinns
If you have good sources then show them.

The wikipedia page sites sources. The Daily Mail article I described as a
"sensationalist article". The first Telegraph article cites its source of
data. The second Telegraph is a commentary piece with 106 comments from people
giving a sampling of opinion with "comment" in the URL. And the final report
is from the California State Library and shows its working.

Better more rigourous sources would be nicer but we at least already have some
that aren't particularly promising which seems counter intuitive. CCTV also
comes at a huge cost, paid for by tax payers and hence determined by voters.

~~~
ig1
The problem with non-peer reviewed articles is that you don't know how they
selected the data, etc. Scientific research requires you set your hypothesis
before you get the results.

Clearly this didn't happen in this case. Why did Telegraph chose to use this
particular metric ("crimes solved using CCTV") rather than for instance "crime
rate change as a result of CCTV" (which would take into account deterrence).
Why did they choose to use total number of CCTV cameras rather than the number
of active CCTV cameras ?

One of the points of peer review is spot biases like this.

I'm not saying that CCTV works (or that it doesn't) but newspapers or non-peer
reviewed research often falls far below an acceptable standard for evidence.

------
sliverstorm
I can't help but think that, given this quote:

 _More than half of all black men without a high-school diploma go to prison
at some time in their lives._

The first step is simple & straightforward. Fix education (or what is
preventing them from getting an education) first, _then_ tackle other problems
with prisons.

~~~
disc
Your first step is simple and straightforward just like saying "go fly to the
moon" is simple and straightforward. Above and beyond the limited resource
distribution we struggle with today (where does increased educational spending
come from? Medicare? Defense Spending? Police?) there's an anti-education
attitude that has worked it's way into lower socio-economic culture. I think
combating this culture component is just as large (if not larger) a job as
providing the educational resources.

~~~
crusso
I'm not googling for them just now, but I _know_ I've seen graphs that show
that as we've spent more and more money on education, we've seen no affect on
educational metrics (test scores, basic competencies, etc.)

I don't think it's a money problem. It's a problem with an intractable public
education system in this country that's only really concerned with its own
power and growth. We could solve that problem with the stroke of a pen by
eliminating the monopoly that the current public education system has upon our
educational tax dollars.

------
cgrubb
Many people reading this will fail to realize that "correctional supervision"
includes about 4M who are on probation or parole. Horrible article.

~~~
m0th87
The entire article is rendered horrible for overlooking one gruesome statistic
among many?

~~~
sliverstorm
Your parent is objecting to what would appear to be intentional manipulation &
misrepresentation of numbers, not accidental overlooking.

Most people reading the article will assume the 6M people are _in a prison_.
Odds are this misconception is intended by the author.

~~~
bobwaycott
Be careful with "most people" comments. I read the article and did not at any
point assume the figure meant # of persons in a prison.

Correctional supervision stood out as not meaning incarceration.

------
nsns
Something's really wrong with this article - lack of an economic angle.
Prisons in the US are an enormous _private_ business, with free labor. (i.e.
<http://www.unicor.gov/about/faqs/top_ten/index.cfm>)

Another problem is the silly/cruel "three strikes" laws, which might put
someone in jail for life for stealing a loaf of bread out of hunger.

------
eliam
Awesome TED talk touching on similar topics. I would recommend if you haven't
watched/heard it yet.
[http://www.ted.com/talks/bryan_stevenson_we_need_to_talk_abo...](http://www.ted.com/talks/bryan_stevenson_we_need_to_talk_about_an_injustice.html)

------
cturner
How would a hacker deal with solitary?

~~~
mindslight
Under humane incarceration, by programming on their computer and communicating
over the internet. There's absolutely no reason these should be denied by
default.

~~~
crusso
I don't understand why we should make prison suck less.

You do realize that if you make prison overly "humane", it eliminates prison
as a form of deterrence.

~~~
potatolicious
Yet, there are many examples of making prisons more humane having a _positive_
impact on recidivism.

And conversely, there is plenty of evidence that severity of punishment does
not have a significant impact on crime rates.

The simple "heavier punishment -> less crime" appeals only to simplistic
logic, but in general is not observed in reality, either in the US or abroad.

The odd thing about many people in the "deterrence" crowd is that so many
don't seem to actually be concerned about lowering crime rates, and are
concerned moreso with exacting their pound of flesh for the injustice
committed by criminals.

------
thinkcomp
Corrections Corporation of America =
<http://www.plainsite.org/flashlight/index.html?id=47162>

------
foxylad
As I age, I realise that time speeds by faster. A year in prison now would a
much smaller punishment than when I was in my teens, when a year seemed like
forever.

Perhaps we need an age-related transform to prison sentences.

~~~
hvass
Engage in novel activities - time "speeding up" is pretty common as you age.
Read about it here:
[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1223225...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122322542)

------
RLG_RLG
As a voting American let me say this is a disgrace. human rights are
inalienable -- and we are close to the line in the USA. We can do better.

------
andyjenn
"The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its
prisons." \- Dostoyevsky.

------
allochthon
My own preferred solution: ankle bracelets with GPS for felons convicted of
non-violent crimes.

------
scrod
This article should be accompanied by another New Yorker piece from a couple
of years ago:

 _Hellhole: Is long-term solitary confinement torture?_

[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_gawande)

------
goggles99
First we should only be comparing the statistics of large countries when
counting prisoners per 100k. Small and third world countries have an entirely
different culture and/or little law enforcement. (Yes I know that we would
still be at the top of the list).

Race (and all the complexities it encompasses) is at the center of this whole
issue. I am black so don't start calling me a racist OK.

Remove blacks from all prison and population statistics when comparing the USA
to other countries' people in prison per 100,000 and we will fall to the
middle of the pack of countries.

I am not suggesting in any way that we deport all of us. All I am saying is
that we need to find a way to teach the black population how to make better
choices in life and give them the opportunity to be rewarded for those
choices. Throwing more public assistance at them is certainly not the answer,
it has only made the problem worse.

We can still do better even then middle of the pack though and this article
brought up some through provoking things.

