
Study Finds Increased Incarceration Has Marginal-To-Zero Impact on Crime - mpweiher
https://eji.org/news/study-finds-increased-incarceration-does-not-reduce-crime
======
cubano
Smart, well-meaning people on boards such as this refuse to see the Prison
Industrial Complex for what it really is...a jobs program for police, courts,
judges, jails, prisons, and of course, lawyers and politicians.

One group "increased incarceration" _definitely_ has a non-marginal positive
impact on are all-of-the-above.

Can you show me any examples, anywhere in history, where a group that directly
benefits from _and_ controls the entry level and duration of access have
_ever_ decided to lower their wages and put at jeopardy their livelihoods?

Because at the heart of it, that's the real effect that decreasing
incarceration will have...closing jails, firing police officers, lowering
ridiculous attorney fees, and shutting down county court complexes.

And we are surprised when the very people whom benefit from the status quo
don't see things the way we do?

~~~
ransom1538
This. One of the best comments I have ever read. In the south you also need to
account for the lack of voting power of African Americans. %30 of African
Americans can’t vote in Florida because of their dealings with the “justice”
system.

[http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/politics/political-
pulse...](http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/politics/political-pulse/os-
former-felon-voting-rights-20170223-story.html)

~~~
bilbo0s
"...%30 of African Americans can’t vote in Florida because of their dealings
with the “justice” system..."

I'm not a southerner. I'm certainly no Floridian. But I strongly suspect
that's not a "coincidence". I think the current system was likely set up as a
political "gimme" meant to appease Southerners.

~~~
bunderbunder
I would advise being careful about treating this as just a north/south thing.
For example, the exact mechanisms by which it happens might not be quite the
same, but the disenfranchisement rate among black voters in Wisconsin is about
the same as what GP reports for Florida.

~~~
bilbo0s
Oh it's the _exact_ same mechanism.

The only difference is that here in Wisconsin we _know_ that our government is
corrupt, and because of the corruption here there is little we can do to
combat that corruption. I mean we have everything from Walker, to little boys
being used for sex at Lincoln Hills, to out and out DA's who are crime lords.
( _Literally_ , a few years back there was a DA who would take "donations" to
"charity" from drug runners. They would actually divert shipments to go
through his jurisdiction because if you get caught all you had to do was pay
the "donation". It was really bad.)

I'm pretty sure if you were to ask the average Wisconsinite, they would openly
admit much of the corruption up here. Not only with crime, or blacks, but with
money, with land, with _everything_ basically. Why do you think we have
protests with hundreds of thousands of people showing up? It's not just
Walker, at least in my opinion it's not. It's the system that people feel he
represents and defends.

By contrast, in Florida, I get the sense that people think that's the way
things are _supposed_ to work. They believe they have a good system and that
the system works the way God intended.

~~~
howard941
> By contrast, in Florida, I get the sense that people think that's the way
> things are supposed to work. They believe they have a good system and that
> the system works the way God intended.

It depends who you ask. I've only lived in Florida for 40 years but I find it
split in thirds with 1/3 willing to tolerate Tallahassee corruption and
crumbling infrastructure as the price of low taxation while the other 2/3 are
appalled but don't or can't vote.

------
zamalek
Because incarceration is _penitentiary,_ which means criminals are made to pay
for their crimes - not to be _rehabilitated._ There other countries where
incarceration works, for example Norway [1] - primary because they focus in
rehabilitation. Incarceration is not the problem, the typical opinion of the
purpose of incarceration is (justice through revenge).

Incarceration is 100% effective for what America wants it to achieve: penance.

[1]: [https://m.phys.org/news/2016-08-norwegian-prisons-
criminal.h...](https://m.phys.org/news/2016-08-norwegian-prisons-
criminal.html)

~~~
nostalgeek
> There other countries where incarceration works, for example Norway [1]

The Nordic model works in Norway because of Norway's society and culture. It
wouldn't work in US, or South Africa or El Salvador because of what level of
violence is deemed acceptable in those countries.

You can try to transpose the Nordic model in US all you want it is not going
to work because these are different societies bound by different civil
contracts and cultures.

Plenty of societies and countries have a prison system that doesn't focus on
rehabilitation,at all, yet the level of violence is still inferior to US by a
long shot.

~~~
amarant
[citation needed] you won't know if it works until you try, has there been any
experimental applications of the nordic model in the US that show it to be
uneffective? there has been at least one in canada that I'm aware
of,(admittedly only targeting youth offenders, so not conclusive, but at least
an indication I guess) and the results were pretty good:
[https://theconversation.com/judges-sentence-youth-
offenders-...](https://theconversation.com/judges-sentence-youth-offenders-to-
chess-with-promising-results-96172)

edit to add, I'm not sure you can call the Canadian trail a copy of "the
nordic system" but it is similar to it in that it focuses on rehab rather than
punishment. I like to think you could adapt from "the nordic system" to make
it work in the us.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
This was the point of halfway houses. They were intended to be an alternative,
or supplement, to incarceration to help genuinely rehabilitate convicts and
help prepare them for release back into general society. They include therapy,
drug treatment, job training, and so on. The NYT ran a report [1] on these
institutions some time back. Recidivism rates were actually higher than those
who just were sent to prison with a 67% recidivism rate for halfway house
residents compared to 60% for prison-only convicts.

And of course those rates are just within 3 years. They get much higher over
time. The US is relatively unique in that we have a relatively large
population of individuals that seem to resist all efforts at stopping them
from engaging in crime. This is not really a problem in places like
Scandinavia. The absolute and utter failure of rehabilitation driven systems
further emphasizes the difference. For further statistics and information on
various sorts of data related to prison, prisoners, recidivism, and so on you
check out the Bureau of Justice Statistics [2]. Their page is loaded with all
the information you could ever want.

\---

In my opinion the major problem is once a culture develops around criminality
it becomes practically impossible to detach the criminality from the culture,
as resisting reform becomes part of the culture. I grew up in this very
culture and it's quite clear that people talking about reformation just have
not been around this very much at all. Prison is not seen as game over. It's
just another part of the game, and prison time is worn as a badge of honor
once people are out, as it shows how 'hard' they are, and gains instant
respect.

For instance have you ever thought about how completely idiotic resisting
arrest is? You're not going to do anything except add years to your sentence,
and get either beat down or killed in the process of it. But the reason people
do this is again because it shows how 'hard' they are. You or I might be
thinking 'Well how can I minimize my prison time and get back to real life?'
so we would never behave this way, and then engage in all sorts of mental
gymnastics to try to explain why somebody else would. But the issue is that
we're not part of this culture, and to understand why things the way they are
you really have to live through it. In that culture prison is just a regular
part of what we'd call 'real life' so this sort of loss minimization calculus
simply does not exist.

The more important question then is where did this culture come from, how did
it emerge and spread, and how could that be stopped in the future? But that's
an entirely different topic.

[1] - [https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/nyregion/pennsylvania-
stu...](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/nyregion/pennsylvania-study-finds-
halfway-houses-dont-reduce-recidivism.html)

[2] - [https://bjs.gov/](https://bjs.gov/)

~~~
vorpalhex
> For instance have you ever thought about how completely idiotic resisting
> arrest is?

If someone grabs your wrist and yanks you off balance - guess what, you're
probably going to try to resist them if only to not fall over. Likewise humans
are not perfectly rational beings - if someone runs towards you and you're
already scared, you're going to start to run. This isn't because you somehow
played out a competent mental calculus on your chances of escaping, it's
because you're an animal with instincts.

Hell, this effect is counted on in martial arts - if you want someone to move,
push them the opposite way.

The issue is that "resisting arrest" has grown to be a vague charge that
encapsulates everything from people outright fighting police officers to
people who are scared and trying to not get knocked off balance.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
This is the day and age of cameras on police, cameras on bystanders, cameras
on the streets, and cameras pretty much everywhere. Hypotheticals are not only
unnecessary but counter productive. You can view practically endless footage
at your leisure.

And these hypotheticals are part of the mental gymnastics I mentioned. This
isn't to say that your hypotheticals have not happened, but if they do happen
they represent an incredibly tiny fraction of all incidents - whereas you are
implicitly suggesting they make up some meaningful percent of incidents. It's
like somebody charged with breaking and entering who somehow genuinely thought
he was getting into his own house after having forgot his keys. I'm sure
that's probably happened, but that says absolutely nothing about the very near
100% of cases where this is not what happened.

------
mberning
This makes no sense. As far as I can tell they pulled property crime out of
their definition of public safety, but left in the cost. This also flies in
the face of the fact that the current era is one of the safest in history.

I think many people are sympathetic to reform in the criminal justice system.
It would be a good thing to do. Particularly laws around drugs and illegal
substances. It also gets to the root of many of these problems. I think that’s
a much better way to move the needle, rather than just looking at the money
spent and deciding “well, this isn’t working based on my definition, so we
might as well not do it”.

~~~
gameswithgo
>This also flies in the face of the fact that the current era is one of the
safest in history.

Is it also one of the safest in history in other nations that have not
increased their incarceration rates?

~~~
edmccard
>Is it also one of the safest in history in other nations that have not
increased their incarceration rates?

Yes[1]

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_drop](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_drop)

~~~
gnu8
Interesting that there is no link between that page and the lead hypothesis,
which seems to be gaining more credibility these days.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead-
crime_hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead-crime_hypothesis)
[https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/02/an-updated-
le...](https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/02/an-updated-lead-crime-
roundup-for-2018/)

------
SamReidHughes
This is a nice data point in how crazy a "study" can be in how it abuses
statistics to detach itself from reality. With a billion variables to control
for, you can find many that seemingly account for trends in crime. Basically,
locking people up prevents them from committing crimes for that duration. For
anything besides organized crime, that's going to reduce crime by removing
whatever crimes they'd commit.

~~~
furyg3
> Basically, locking people up prevents them from committing crimes for that
> duration. [...] that's going to reduce crime by removing whatever crimes
> they'd commit.

You're making a lot of assumptions here. 1) There is no crime in prison. 2)
The imprisoned would have kept on committing crime for their total sentence if
they were not in jail. 3) Prisoners 'return' to the world committing the same
type/volume of crimes that they were committing when they went in.

For #1: There is crime in prison, a whole lot of it, and (even if you don't
have sympathy for criminals) it's bad for society; people may come out worse
off than they went in, driving crime up further. Jail is an intense
experience, and it seems like the skills that you develop while 'surviving' in
jail may not be so constructive for society when you're released.

For #2: As a kid my friends and I made a lot of stupid mistakes and some
pretty bad decisions. Purely arbitrary factors (race, affluence, geography,
etc) meant that none of us were ever locked up for them. We had the
opportunity to correct our behavior, grow out of it. Had we have been punished
harshly, it's likely that that our bad behavior would have continued. This is
due to #1 (exposure to crime/criminals in prison, and contact with the justice
system), but also loss of opportunities, and probably a different exposure or
experience with drugs.

For #3: The above two points lead to the possibility that people who come out
of jail are more likely to engage in more or worse criminal activity when
they're released than when they went in.

So while there need to be consequences for crime, it's not at all evident that
increased incarceration, certainly the way we are doing it, would lead to
reduced criminal activity.

~~~
skate22
Well for my family member who was/is a heroin addict, 6 months in jail meant 6
months of not stealing from her family. 6 months of not neglecting her kid. 6
months of sobriety to reflect on where her life was going.

She did not stay clean, and I'm sure we can do better as a society to rehab
our people, but for 6 months she was limited in the damage she could do to
those around her.

I'm pretty conflicted on the topic

~~~
emiliobumachar
How could one possibly not neglect one's kid while in jail?

Presumably someone or some institution stepped in, probably the family. How
much was the jailing necessary for the kid to get this help?

~~~
jothezero
By screaming at the child, hitting the child, taking drugs around the
child....

Keep the easy questions coming.

~~~
nostoc
That's abuse, not neglect.

~~~
parsnips
A distinction without a meaningful difference.

~~~
ilovetux
I believe that the difference is meaningful. Neglect is a very specific type
of abuse.

Physical, emotional and sexual abuse are all very different from neglect. All
forms of abuse are different in terms of the psychological effects on the
abused, societal reactions to both parties, motivation on the part of the
abuser and much more.

------
pytyper2
How could the opposite ever be true, most incarcerated are not there for life
and when they get out they get shit on by the rest of us. Post incarceration
opportunities that lead to yearly incomes above the poverty line are reduced
10x probably more. I'm not saying we shouldn't jail people but jail should be
like forced education unless your jail term is for life.

~~~
cubano
What good is forcing someone to get an "education" when corporations refuse to
give decent paying jobs with benefits to ex-cons?

~~~
pytyper2
They don't offer decent paying jobs because the odds are that if you are a con
you don't have the skills to hold the job and/or can't be trusted.

------
whack
I wonder how many people actually understood what the article is referring to
when it says "increased incarceration". It's not referring to increased jail
sentences for those who commit violent times. It's referring to the
imprisoning of non-violent "criminals" such as marijuana dealers.

> " _Higher incarceration rates are not associated with lower violent crime
> rates, because expanding incarceration primarily means that more people
> convicted of nonviolent, "marginal" offenses (like drug offenses and low-
> level property offenses) and "infrequent" offenses are imprisoned._"

I'm all for legalizing marijuana and other soft drugs, but not for going easy
on rapists and murderers. Do increased jail sentences have a deterrent effect?
A quick Google search shows that the answer is yes, up to a certain point, and
this makes perfect logical sense. If the punishment for committing armed
robbery consisted solely of one day in prison, so many more people would give
it a go. As you increase the sentence from one day to multiple years, you
would weed out the less hardcore would-be criminals.

We can debate the inflection point where the effects start to taper off. But
there is no doubt that having some threat of jail time, has a extremely
significant impact on crime.

[https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2016/03/29/longer-
ja...](https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2016/03/29/longer-jail-
sentences-do-deter-crime-but-only-up-to-a-point)

------
smallgovt
The data show that areas with high incarceration rates generally have higher
crime rates; and areas with lower incarceration rates generally have lower
crime rates.

The article then deduces that high incarceration rates CAUSE high crime rates
when it seems blatantly obvious to me that the causation runs in the OPPOSITE
direction.

Areas with high crime rate cause high incarceration rates because as crime
rate goes up, more people must be put in prison.

I don't necessarily disagree with the article's agenda (to support prison
reform) but the reasoning seems shockingly lacking.

Also, the article mentions that the incarceration budget went up by 340% with
no meaningful change to public safety, but fails to mention that inflation
during the same time period was 240%....so the budget didn't really increase
all that much.

------
warbaker
This is just a correlation study, showing that states where incarceration went
up did not simultaneously have decreasing crime rates.

The study can't tell you what would have happened if that state had reduced
incarceration rates.

People who get cancer treatment are far more likely to have cancer than the
general population. This does not mean that reducing cancer treatment reducing
cancer treatment will reduce cancer incidence!

------
theShowdown55
Why can't the focus ever be on the prevention of crime in the first place?
These discussions always dissolve into the same cesspool of blaming prisoners
and politicians. The government can never be relied on to fix things. The
single biggest predictor of living in poverty or doing time in prison is
growing up with no father around. 80% of prisoners today had no father in
their life.

Seems like we should be looking at things like that. I never shook those
conversations here though. W have to empower single motherhood (heroism) and
not discourage it here... Well look at where that has led us.

------
SaintGhurka
While I'm sympathetic to this point of view, it's really hard to take
seriously a conclusion like "no impact".

California's murder rate peaked around 1994. Three-strikes sentencing was
enacted that same year in CA and about a dozen other states. Are we to believe
that the 50% decline in murders since then is not, at least in part, a result
of the incarceration of repeat criminals?

I guess we'll find out soon enough now that 3-strikes is being considerably
softened.

~~~
grandmczeb
Property and violent crime rates started dropping in California in the early
90s[1], along with the rest of the country, before three-strikes was enacted.
Crime in California has also declined at rates similar to states without
three-strikes policies (e.g. Illinois).

[1] [http://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/crime-
trends-1.png](http://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/crime-trends-1.png)

~~~
SaintGhurka
Using the same site you referenced, violent crime peaked around 1993, the year
before three strikes.

[http://www.ppic.org/publication/crime-trends-in-
california/](http://www.ppic.org/publication/crime-trends-in-california/)

Also, the number of homicides specifically peaked in 1993 at 4,096 and dropped
almost every year for the next 25 years. It looks like it bottomed out in 2014
and started climbing again.

[http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/cacrime.htm](http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/cacrime.htm)

It's true that rates in other states dropped also. You mentioned Illinois who
did not enact a three strikes law (but its neighbors did, as did the federal
government). Note that it didn't see improvement on the same scale as
California - and now Chicago's murder rate is so bad that it makes the
national news almost every week.

I really don't know that the halving of the murder rate should be credited to
tougher sentencing, but it coincides pretty well - so well that when I see
claims that they have zero effect I can't help but assume that the findings
are agenda-driven.

But tough sentencing laws are falling out of favor and being reversed - or
partially reversed. Maybe the homicide rate will stay low and 3-strikes laws
will be completely discredited.

------
warbaker
This is just a correlation study, showing that states where incarceration went
up did not simultaneously have decreasing crime rates.

The study can't tell you what would have happened if that state had reduced
incarceration rates.

People who get cancer treatment are far more likely to have cancer than the
general population. This does not mean that reducing cancer treatment rates
will reduce cancer rates!

------
downandout
Whenever this topic comes up, I like to link to this [1] study done by the
ACLU. It is a study on people that have received life without parole for
nonviolent offenses. It is truly shocking that US lawmakers have allowed even
one of these sentences to happen. The "land of the free" is anything but.
Here's one of the more salient quotes:

 _"...thousands of people are serving life sentences without the possibility
of parole for nonviolent crimes as petty as siphoning gasoline from an
18-wheeler, shoplifting three belts, breaking into a parked car and stealing a
woman’s bagged lunch, or possessing a bottle cap smeared with heroin
residue."_

[1] [https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/111813-lwop-complete-
repor...](https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/111813-lwop-complete-report.pdf)

------
glitcher
Too many politicians and voters are in the habit of ignoring facts and instead
going with their gut feelings, even when the facts directly contradict their
"feelings". And unfortunately fear mongering for votes can be very effective.

Here's Newt Gingrich's classic "debate" between FBI crime statistics and his
own "feelings". Notice particularly the language he uses to frame actual facts
that don't agree with his ideology:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnhJWusyj4I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnhJWusyj4I)

------
wodenokoto
I thought it had positive impact on crime - that is, prison teaches petty
thieves to become hardened criminals.

------
notyourtypical
Not surprised at all. Born and raised in a country with criminal punishments a
lot harsher than here in Canada yet the crime rate is 5-10 times higher.

------
jothezero
This is making a good case for death penalty.

~~~
prolikewh0a
4%+ of people who receieve the death penalty are innocent. This is
unacceptable.

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/28/death-
penalty-...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/28/death-penalty-
study-4-percent-defendants-innocent)

~~~
casiotone
100% of people who receive the death penalty are murdered. This is
unacceptable.

~~~
ugotsta
murder: the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another.

If a legal system grants the death penalty, it isn't murder under that legal
system.

