
U.S. Incarceration and Crime Rates Continue to Fall in Tandem - ascertain
http://reason.com/blog/2016/12/30/incarceration-and-crime-rates-fall-in-ta
======
alpsgolden
Homicide rates are the key number to track. Other crime statistics have big
reporting problems. Police can easily not report a crime (especially when
there is pressure to make the stats look good), people stop calling police if
they think the police won't do anything, etc. But it is very hard to hide a
body.

And homicide rates have risen substantially in the last two years (up 10.4% in
2015, and projected for 13.1% this year). These are the biggest increases in a
generation.

[http://www.copinthehood.com/2016/09/spin-this-biggest-
murder...](http://www.copinthehood.com/2016/09/spin-this-biggest-murder-
increase-in-45.html)

[http://www.copinthehood.com/2016/11/homicide-is-up-and-
its-n...](http://www.copinthehood.com/2016/11/homicide-is-up-and-its-not-
trumps-fault.html)

I'm not sure if the de-incarceration is responsible for the rise in crime.
From my following, it seems like the police backing off in response to
protests, riots, and consent decrees has a bigger impact. And I'm not a fan of
prison -- there are better ways to deter crime and to keep violent criminals
away from normal people. But I do notice that most times when I see a murder
in the news, and the suspect has been apprehended, the suspect has a
disturbingly long wrap sheet and I've wondered to myself, "how was this person
allowed back out into civilized society."

~~~
kapitza
Society's tolerance for crime is bizarrely irrational. There will be about 800
murders in Chicago this year -- yawn.

Now imagine if 800 Chicagoans were killed by radiation leaks from a nuclear
plant. "Well, you can't have electricity without plutonium. Do you want to
turn everyone's lights off?" Or if 800 African-Americans were lynched Emmett
Till style by KKK thugs. "Regrettable, but what are you going to do? And don't
white people have legitimate complaints?"

Even murder rates can be fudged -- turn the homicide into a "death
investigation":

[http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-
Magazine/May-2014/Chicago-...](http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-
Magazine/May-2014/Chicago-crime-rates/)

Another point to keep in mind when you see these too-good-to-be-true stories
is that criminal subcultures are actually quite conservative. When laws and
policies change, it takes time for people to collectively figure out what they
can get away with. This makes crime rates a lagging indicator -- we're still
experiencing the positive effects of the crime crackdown of the '90s, not just
in incarceration rates but in cultural behavior.

The mid-'60s were another period when social scientists realized that
punishment was a medieval anachronism. It took 10-20 years to see the full
effects of these policies, and another 10 for the political backlash to get
started. It seems like we're due for another round of this pendulum.

~~~
emmelaich
> Society's tolerance for crime is bizarrely irrational.
    
    
       In 1940, a survey was taken of teachers asking them
       to list the five most important problems in school.
       They were: (1) talking out of turn; (2) chewing gum;
       (3) making noise; (4) running in halls; and (5) cutting
       in line.
    
       Fifty years later, the survey was repeated. The 1990
       list was substantially revised: (1) drug abuse;
       (2) alcohol abuse; (3) pregnancy; (4) suicide;
       (5) rape.
    

From [http://www.aei.org/publication/defining-deviancy-
up/](http://www.aei.org/publication/defining-deviancy-up/), Charles
Krauthammers corollary to Pat Moynihan's Defining Deviancy Down.
[http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/formans/DefiningDeviancy.htm](http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/formans/DefiningDeviancy.htm)

Still good reading and still controversial after all these years.

~~~
burkaman
There is much more to that article than the introduction, but in case anyone
is wondering why Krauthammer doesn't cite a source for those surveys, it's
because they're not real:
[http://www.snopes.com/language/document/school.asp](http://www.snopes.com/language/document/school.asp),
or search "Discipline List" here
[http://ece.dallasnews.com/archive/](http://ece.dallasnews.com/archive/)

A bit later in the article, Krauthammer really succinctly sums up a major flaw
in his own argument:

> As part of this project of moral leveling, whole new areas of deviancy–such
> as date rape and politically incorrect speech–have been discovered. And old
> areas–such as child abuse–have been amplified by endless reiteration in the
> public presses and validated by learned reports of their astonishing
> frequency.

Yes, perhaps the reason rape seems so much more common is that people in the
1940s didn't understand what rape is. Apparently some people still don't.

~~~
kapitza
_Yes, perhaps the reason rape seems so much more common is that people in the
1940s didn 't understand what rape is._

I want to order a time machine and send you back to have a conversation with
your great-grandparents, for whom you seem to have so little respect.

Sure, the "list" isn't real. People wouldn't have been passing it around in
the '70s if it hadn't reflected the actual experience of living in the '40s,
which many, many people at that time remembered well.

A time machine is not actually available. Your great-grandparents are probably
dead. But you can still go read a bunch of books from the amazing, wonderful,
astoundingly different, and yes -- not at all perfect -- world that they lived
in. Chronological chauvinism is not a healthy emotion.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
> Your great-grandparents are probably dead. But you can still go read a bunch
> of books from the amazing, wonderful, astoundingly different, and yes -- not
> at all perfect -- world that they lived in.

My great-grandparents were crossing the Atlantic to flee pogroms. My
grandfather did similar, but lost the rest of his family who didn't leave
Europe in the 1910s and 1920s when the 1930s and 1940s set in. There was this
little thing while my grandmother was young called, "the Holocaust".

 _Fuck_ the violence, authoritarianism, and chauvinisms of the past. Today is
far better.

------
ClayFerguson
If we ever decriminalize Marijuana at the Federal level, that seems to me like
it would mean millions of prisoners held for offenses involving only that drug
would need to be set free. In my mind it is a horrible injustice to jail
people for a relatively harmless substance like THC.

I think in 100 years, more evolved humans will look back on the THC
incarcerations the same way we now look upon the Salem Witch trials, or
prohibition, etc. You know, one of those times where mankind just massively
screwed up 'en mass' on sort of a societal level, and was unable to correct
itself because the majority of people are brainwashed into believing whatever
their parents told them about things. Sort of as a feed-back loop also,
parents were unwilling to teach their children things that conflicted with
societal norms. So society as a whole can fall into this kind of a 'rut' where
getting out of it takes a long process of evolution of thought.

~~~
rayiner
There are not millions of people being held for offenses only involving
marijuana:
[https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/dofp12.pdf](https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/dofp12.pdf)
(page 2).

There's about 95,000 people in federal prison with a drug offense as their
most serious charge. About 11,500 of those charges involved primarily
marijuana. (The overwhelming majority of that is for trafficking, not
possession.)

Rolling Stone estimated about 40,000 people in prison for convictions
primarily involving marijuana, with about half of those involving marijuana
alone:
[http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/lists/top-10-marijuana-m...](http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/lists/top-10-marijuana-
myths-and-facts-20120822/myth-prisons-are-full-of-people-in-for-marijuana-
possession-19691231).

That is of course not to say that justice, for a few tens of thousands of
people isn't an important thing! Though I hesitate a little bit to put
trafficking in the same "justice" category as using. It's generally accepted
that the government has much more leeway to control what is sold in the market
than to control what people do with their bodies.

~~~
nodamage
It's pretty misleading to look only at federal inmates as they're a relatively
small percentage of the overall prison population. There are currently 189,520
total federal inmates
([https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/population_statistics.j...](https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/population_statistics.jsp))
out of the total 2,173,800 incarcerated individuals (as per original article)
in the US. Probably better to look for a figure that includes state prisons
and local jails as well.

Edit: here's a handy infographic:
[https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2016.html](https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2016.html)

~~~
1_2__3
So if you're right then doesn't that mean that half of all federal inmates are
there for marijuana possession?

~~~
Spare_account
From the grandfather post to yours:

"There's about 95,000 people in federal prison with a drug offense as their
most serious charge. About 11,500 of those charges involved primarily
marijuana. (The overwhelming majority of that is for trafficking, not
possession.)"

So no, your statement is not correct. If we take 'overwhelming majority' of
11,500 as 60%, that would leave ~5000 prisoners whose 'most serious charge' is
possession of marijuana. Or about 2.5% of the federal inmate population (all
this assuming that the figures quoted are correct, I didn't source them
myself).

------
eth0up
This is dandy and such, but it has a long, long way to go yet, still boasting
the highest incarceration rates in the world:

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_ra...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate)

2\. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-
checker/wp/2015/07/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-
checker/wp/2015/07/07/yes-u-s-locks-people-up-at-a-higher-rate-than-any-other-
country/)

~~~
rayiner
The difference is a little less shocking when you adjust for crime rates. E.g.
we have about 8-10x higher incarceration rate of Germany, but we also have
more than 4x the murders per capita. (And the chicken came before the egg
here. Violent crime started going up in the 1960s, but it wasn't until the
late 1990s that the incarceration rate had gone up by the same proportion as
the violent crime rate.)

Americans aren't very generous when it comes to crime. In many European
countries, even murder carries only about a 10-15 year sentence. On the other
hand, I wonder if that's a product of our situation. The United States is
fantastically violent in comparison to Europe, and always has been:
[http://ourworldindata.org/wp-
content/uploads/2013/03/homicid...](http://ourworldindata.org/wp-
content/uploads/2013/03/homicide-rates-in-the-united-states-and-
england-1900-2000-pinker-2011-jpg.jpg).

E.g. Berlin is slightly bigger than Chicago. In a typical year, it might have
60-70 murders. Chicago in comparison had well over 700 this year. You can't
look at the criminal justice system in the U.S. relative to our more
enlightened European counterparts without keeping in mind that difference.

~~~
filoeleven
> (And the chicken came before the egg here. Violent crime started going up in
> the 1960s, but it wasn't until the late 1990s that the incarceration rate
> had gone up by the same proportion as the violent crime rate.)

Did the incarceration rate for violent crime go up, or was it the total
incarceration rate due to e.g. increased prosecution of drug arrests? If it's
the former, then it's great that more violent criminals are being caught and
sentenced, but if it's the latter then it's just compounding the problem.

~~~
rayiner
Even if we released all drug prisoners, the incarceration rate would only be
about 15% lower: [http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/releasing-drug-
offenders-...](http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/releasing-drug-offenders-
wont-end-mass-incarceration). Meanwhile, it's about 6-7 times higher than what
it was in the 1960s. Thus, almost all of that growth was not from drug
offenses.

It's not necessarily "great" that more violent criminals are being caught and
sentenced. Many European countries manage just fine having e.g. 10-15 years
maximum even for murder. Which is why I find the drug thing to be so
frustrating. Drugs are not the major issue in the prison system. The real
issue is whether just locking people up as a response to high crime rates
actually works or not.

------
starik36
When they "drug related crimes"... does that mean these people are in prison
for using/selling drugs or for robbing a liquor store to pay for drugs?

Because that would skew the stats significantly.

~~~
gerbal
It probably means a crime where there is also a drug related indictment (or
conviction, not sure which). Your example would be a crime of robbery, plus
possession.

I wonder how many cases of 'drug related crime' are just defendants who were
arrested for another crime while they had small time possession?

------
taxicabjesus
Punishment is almost always gratuitous. Aside from the handful of people whom
society needs to be protected from, prison is always counter-productive. One
of the recent stories linked here talks about how the brain doesn't really
finish developing until the mid-20's, and that 20-something "kids" frequently
get locked up for impulsiveness...

I had a passenger who got fined $1000 for letting his medical marijuana card
expire. In the future, this fellow has it on his record that he is a political
criminal who didn't hurt anyone, and a zealous brain-dead prosecutor might use
this prior conviction to advocate for prison.

Another passenger had recently been released from a 2-year prison sentence.
Her crime was sharing a single opiate pill with a friend. The cop was
chuckling as he wrote her up. This one had gotten fat on prison food, which is
not very nutritious. Several of her fellow inmates died from the neglect. (I
guess police officers have to be rather disconnected from the consequences of
their job. "I don't make the rules, I just enforce them" is a cop-out.)

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (author of The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, etc)
recently had this to say:

    
    
      Being nice counts the most when 
      you are nice to people ignored 
      by others, deprived of attention, 
      or devoid of friends. The rest is 
      largely theater.
    

I tried to be nice to all my passengers, especially those who were having a
rough day. One day I got a person going to the drive-through liquor store. I
spent a few extra minutes talking to this person. After her taxi ride, I
called back a time or two. There was a bit of hope in her voice - 'someone
cares'. But on the third day she didn't answer, and I got distracted.
Apparently she sobered up, but I didn't know that until later. After about two
months this one started drinking again, found my card, and she called me
because she just wanted someone nice to talk to.

This one had tried (really hard) to stay sober after almost 2-years in prison
for her 3rd DUI. But life happened, and she hadn't learned how to cope in
minimum-security prison.

I worked with her regularly over the course of about two years. She'd sober
up, get a job, have a bad day at work, relapse... Finally I turned her over to
her family (who previously had tried the "maybe mom will stop drinking if we
ignore her" strategy), and she has really turned the corner now that she knows
her kids are there to support her. Her son recently trusted her to watch her
grandkids overnight. Prison didn't enable this transformation. (she originally
fell into the alcoholic's pit when she found that vodka helped her anxiety
better than the Xanax prescription. Benzodiazepines only work for about 4
weeks, before the patient's anxiety levels become worse than before.)

I'm still thinking about whether I should say more about this passenger. _The
Difference Between Boys and Girls_ [1] is about another passenger who did
quite well after meeting me.

[1] [http://www.taxiwars.org/2016/02/the-difference-between-
boys-...](http://www.taxiwars.org/2016/02/the-difference-between-boys-
girls.html)

~~~
TSF1203
Not to detract from your otherwise excellent point and story, but I take a bit
of issue with:

> (who previously had tried the "mom will stop drinking if we ignore her"
> strategy)

As someone who's been the child in that situation, sometimes you really just
need an extended break from dealing with a parent's addiction.

It's extremely stressful and really hard to get over the resentment stemming
from a childhood destroyed by a parent's addiction.

Some people are more resilient and can be there for their addicted parents as
adults, but I think it's a little unfair to fault people for needing to
distance themselves from their often traumatic childhoods. It's a bit like
blaming soldiers for not continuing their military service after suffering a
PTSD-inducing event (which hopefully we can agree is not behavior we should
encourage).

Sorry if you weren't trying to imply blame or fault on the children, but that
does happen fairly regularly.

~~~
taxicabjesus
I do completely understand her kids' reaction. I was able to reach their mom
in a way that they couldn't, because I was an extremely over-qualified taxi
driver.

Addictions are rather hard; society's efforts to punish addiction makes them
harder still.

------
Altay-
This is such a pointless post. Why did it do so well here? Did any of you LOOK
at the post and the stats/chart?

2% down since the peak. Who cares. Look at that chart. Its not even
noticeable.

------
jack9
[http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-
correlations](http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations)

I'm really interested in Lead poisoning cases from the past decade graphed
against this correlative coincidence that likely has some external variables,
affecting both.

------
austincheney
The data indicates just how much Americans need to use drugs. Imagine how big
the numbers get when you scoop in prescription drugs in addition to prohibited
substances. Clearly drug use is more important to large number of Americans
than risk of incarceration.

Why does America have such a greater drug fascination than perhaps every other
country?

~~~
indigo_rex
I'm not confirming or denying that the US has maybe the worst drug problem in
the world - seems plausible. But, on addiction (slightly different, but
related), Rat Park is an interesting point of focus.

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-real-cause-
of-...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-real-cause-of-
addicti_b_6506936.html)

~~~
timmaxw
Follow-up studies were unable to reproduce the Rat Park results.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9148292?dopt=Abstract](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9148292?dopt=Abstract)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2616610?dopt=Abstract](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2616610?dopt=Abstract)

~~~
indigo_rex
I was not aware. Thank you for the links/correction!

------
MichaelBurge
> Drug offenders accounted for half of federal prisoners and 16 percent of
> state prisoners in 2015. The decrease in the federal prison population was
> largely due to shorter drug sentences authorized by Congress and the U.S.
> Sentencing Commission.

And
this([https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/jmd/legacy/2013/...](https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/jmd/legacy/2013/09/07/prisons-
detention.pdf)):

> The FY 2015 Budget requests a total of $8.5 billion for federal prisons and
> detention

And from:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget)

> During fiscal year 2015, the Federal government received approximately $3.25
> trillion in tax and fee revenue and had outlays (spending) of $3.7 trillion;

The population of the US is 318.9 million, and (from
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States)):

> In total, 6,899,000 adults were under correctional supervision (probation,
> parole, jail, or prison) in 2013 – about 2.8% of adults (1 in 35) in the
> U.S. resident population.

So our federal government would be 0.1% smaller in terms of expenses if it
weren't responsible for drug offenses, but a full 1.4% of the population is
under their control as a result. 2% of the population has lost its right to
vote, so perhaps 1% due to drug offenses.

That's about half the number of Jews in the US, which both political parties
pander to quite heavily(making Israel a huge point of contention in any
election). I guess that makes sense: drug reform is less visible than Israel
in the news but still significant, though I haven't measured it to say that
it's half.

You're actually allowed to discriminate against people and take away their
right to vote, but the states are punished by reducing their representational
basis so they get fewer legislators and electors in elections. Since we have a
winner-takes-all system, this encourages states to allow all minority groups
to vote if they wouldn't tip the election. I was originally thinking it'd be
strange for states to reduce their basis by as much as 1%, but it looks like
there's an exemption for crimes:

> Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to
> their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each
> State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any
> election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the
> United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial
> officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to
> any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age,
> and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for
> participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation
> therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male
> citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of
> age in such State.

I suppose, strictly speaking, you could have your right to vote stripped away
if you get a parking ticket? I wonder if it's a gerrymandering scheme to throw
Democrats in prison and take away their right to vote. (Democrats tend to be
big on drugs)

Since drug use counts towards the arrests but probably doesn't count towards
the crime rate(it's a victimless crime, and the offender doesn't report it),
that portion of it shouldn't affect the link described in the article.

I'm not sure it's smart to directly compare percentages like the article does.
If the crime rate is already low because all the criminals are locked up, then
you'll have no change in crime rate and a low change in imprisonment. And you
usually want to compare derivatives of the log-percentage, not the percentage
directly.

~~~
utexaspunk
Support for Israel isn't just about pandering to Jews. There are a lot of
fundamentalist Christians who believe Israel's existence is necessary for
Christ's return, that allying ourselves with Israel is being on God's side,
etc.. I doubt it would be worth making political hay out of it if Jews were
the only ones who cared.

~~~
__derek__
Exactly. Just to pluck one at random, Michele Bachmann is an example.[1]

[1]:
[https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2011-07-18/michele-b...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2011-07-18/michele-
bachmann-s-hazardous-love-for-israel-jeffrey-goldberg)

------
lintiness
overlay economic growth and contraction, and there's your answer.

~~~
WillPostForFood
There appears to be a only small correlation to the overall trend down, and
economic growth. For example, crime declined in 2008 and 2009 when the economy
was still flat and unemployment was high. Crime did tick up slightly leading
into the recession, though not substantially. So while it has some impact, it
doesn't look like it accounts for the broad trend down since the 90s.

------
yusee
Thanks, Obama!

------
disposablezero
Still far-and-away the highest incarceration rate per capita in the world,
despite post-truth libertarian propaganda.

~~~
acbabis
Who has a higher rate?

~~~
disposablezero
??? Not one major country. The US is the highest.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate)

