
Raise the Crime Rate (2012) - myrrh
https://nplusonemag.com/issue-13/politics/raise-the-crime-rate/
======
hammerzeit
I applaud this article for challenging the received wisdom in libertarian
communities that our prison problems are a function of drug laws -- indeed, if
there's one thing this article does well, it's establishing that we cannot
solve our problems solely by dealing with nonviolent crime.

That said, this article makes a large number of controversial claims that it
fails to support on anything other than a rhetorical level, including:

* The moral crisis in prisons is so severe that effectively any social burden should be borne for it to be fixed.

* In time, the increased public money from eliminating prisons will turn violent felons into peaceful individuals.

* The differences between the US and UK's social situations is a function of our prisons.

Ultimately, this article's vigor outweighs its coherence; it seems to
oscillate between making ontological claims and moral claims, between
libertarian claims and authoritarian claims (note the advocacy for more CCTV).

~~~
whiddershins
It is not inherently authoritarian to have cctvs. It can just as easily be an
anarchist or libertarian concept. It really depends on who pays for and
controls the cameras, who has access to the recordings, and what punishments
can be given to those recorded while committing a crime.

------
clay_to_n
Wow, very powerful article. I agree that our prison system is America's
biggest moral wrong, and I hope that history books in 50 years write about how
sad and unjust it is in our time.

That said, does anyone know what proposed solutions are? When the author talks
of abolishing the prison system in exchange for higher crime rates (and
potentially even more deaths by the state), does he literally mean we should
close all prisons (like he seems to say near the end)? I'd love to see more
articles / writing about this, and proposed solutions with specifics about how
many people could be removed from the prison system, estimates for increases
in capital punishment (if arguing we should have more), etc.

~~~
kazagistar
The problem presented is very real, but the proposed "solution" is absurd.
There are plenty of way functional prison systems. As long as we stop
dehumanizing felons and normalizing crimes against them, I see no reason why
reform is impossible.

~~~
jessaustin
Reasonable prison systems incarcerate much smaller percentages of their
populations than the USA one does. Any reform worth contemplating will result
in the release of many prisoners, and the closure of prisons in all but the
most overcrowded states.

~~~
Ntrails
_Already in the Prison Treatment Act of 1945, the view was expressed that the
deprivation of freedom itself should be regarded as the penal element of a
prison sentence and not the actual prison experience itself. Thus, the PTA of
1974 states explicitly that an inmate shall be treated with respect for his or
her human dignity._ [1]

As ever when I look for an country that I think will be an example of doing
something well, I start with the nordics. And I see that Sweden has recently
closed 4 prisons because they don't have enough prisoners to fill them any
more. [2]

I would love to hear counter points if my cursory reading has missed something
- but in general I was once again impressed by the attitudes I see there.

[1]
[http://www.internationalpenalandpenitentiaryfoundation.org/S...](http://www.internationalpenalandpenitentiaryfoundation.org/Site/documents/Stavern/29_Stavern_Report%20Sweden.pdf)
[2][http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/11/sweden-
closes-p...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/11/sweden-closes-
prisons-number-inmates-plummets)

~~~
reitanqild
Counterpoint: the Norwegian government is considering hiring capacity in the
Netherlands for 700 long term prisoners. Sweden is said to have considered
hiring capacity as well but decided against because of the legal minefield
surrounding this topic.

(Edit: Since this is possibly controversial, here are a few Norwegian sources:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=soning+i+Nederland](https://www.google.com/search?q=soning+i+Nederland)
)

------
m0nty
Excellent article until we get to this:

"[T]he first question any prison abolitionist needs to answer is what we’re
supposed to do with violent criminals. An important part of that answer has to
be that we must simply put up with an increased level of risk in our daily
lives."

Good luck selling that idea. It drifts off-topic in any case, since up until
then the article is mainly about prison reform and (for the most part) non-
violent offenders themselves becoming victims of violent inmates. But
wholesale release of violent offenders back into the community? It won't
happen, and no politician who hopes to get elected will touch that message
with a 10-foot pole.

Reading on:

"Prison abolitionists should be ready to advocate a massive expansion of the
death penalty if that’s what it takes to move the discussion forward"

So now you're determined to alienate people on both the left and the right, on
the dubious notion that violent offenders should be released, but the most
violent should be executed?

~~~
api_or_ipa
If you put aside political left and rights, then the arguments seem to be a
bit more justifiable. At least, the author isn't sticking to party talking
points and making new arguments.

I think what the author is saying is that prisons are, by them selves, a bad
way to encourage reasonably low and sustainable crime rates. Wherever
possible, criminals should be "punished" by out-of-prison solutions and
rehabilitation. The author is pushing the point of executing everyone as an
almost rhetorical argument. If you want to imprison so many people, why not
simply kill them?

~~~
m0nty
I suppose I'm using left and right as short-hand for progressive and
authoritarian, but it's a bit clumsy and not that much shorter.

It's an excellent article, but even if it is just a rhetorical position (re-
reading, I accept it could be) I think it poisons the debate to the extent
that nobody will engage with it. If you really want to argue in favour of
releasing murderers and violent criminals from prison, it will be branded a
"murderer's manifesto" and the debate is basically over. So talk about
reforming the mostly futile drug laws, three-strike laws, etc, before anything
else.

------
jtheory
[http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/feb...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/feb/21/us-
more-men-raped-than-women)

This also links to other resources on the subject, and discusses some of the
startling stats in the OP (like that in the US more men are raped than women,
because of prison rape).

~~~
bostik
After reading these two articles, I can't help but wonder if the depiction of
prison life in US, as seen in Oz [0], wasn't that far from truth.

I still would want to get some background (and financial interests) on the
author. The build-up of the article culminates the third chapter from the end:

 _Abolishing prisons and releasing all the prisoners would amount to a
deregulation of criminal punishment. It would mean letting the private sector
determine how best to prevent ourselves from getting robbed. In high finance,
the laissez-faire approach has proved to be a disaster; for petty crime, it
would be a boon._

So, the antidote to the proposed solution will be more gated communities and
private police forces guarding these sanctuaries? Considering that the article
avoided pointing at the financial incentives of the prison industrial complex
system, I can't shake a feeling there are some other financial interests
behind this article.

[0]:
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118421/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118421/)

------
jsdalton
Perhaps surprisingly -- or perhaps not -- a strong plurality of Americans
actually think prison life is "too easy":
[https://today.yougov.com/news/2014/07/21/many-americans-
thin...](https://today.yougov.com/news/2014/07/21/many-americans-think-prison-
life-too-easy/)

~~~
joesmo
It's never surprising that the vast majority is wrong. The majority is always
wrong by definition. I doubt anyone who has been to prison, even for a tour,
thinks it's "too easy."

~~~
Fuzzwah
> The majority is always wrong by definition

Care to explain the thinking behind that logic?

I can't seem to get my head anywhere near understanding how you can state
this.

------
candu
Our approach to crime here in the US strikes me as the dark underbelly of the
myth of meritocratic rugged individualism. If success is individual in nature,
failure must be as well, and it's much easier to dehumanize an entire class of
"failures" when you believe that the blame lies entirely with them.

------
jqm
The article had me until about 3/4 of the way through. (still a good article).

We can't, and we won't, abolish the prison system in the foreseeable future.
What we can and what we should do is enact some drastic reforms of our
criminal justice system. The old guard needs to be removed from it's duties
almost to the man. The CJ system in the US has become an expensive, shameful
joke and without a doubt, causes far more harm than good to our society.

~~~
jessaustin
Even if one finds the conclusions extreme, they can be valuable if they're
extreme in the right direction. We have to move the Overton window somehow.

------
heygiraffe
Lately we've seen a number of well written, compelling articles about
reforming the U.S. criminal justice system. There was one not long ago about a
woman who moved to a poor inner-city neighborhood for a while and wrote about
it. Here is another one.

But these articles always have a missing piece: why are there so many crimes
committed? In the above-mentioned article, it was noted that many of the
woman's neighbors would never call the police, as to do so would result in a
check on possible warrants for their arrest. But with no further explanation,
you've just lost the hordes of right-leaning American suburban whites. They'll
think, "There are no warrants out for _my_ arrest, because I don't go around
committing crimes. Why can't these people do the same?"

Similarly, this article discusses the case of "petty thief" Roderick Johnson,
who was used as a sex slave in prison, and raped daily for a year and a half.
And then:

> After Johnson got out, he lodged a civil suit against six guards who he said
> refused to help him. In 2005, a Wichita Falls jury found in favor of the
> guards. In 2007, after passing a note to a clerk at a gas station that read,
> “I have 9 mm. Put the money in the bag,” Johnson was arrested again. This
> time, since Johnson was a repeat offender, he got nineteen years.

And my proverbial suburban white thinks, "If you don't want to be a sex slave,
then stop pulling armed robberies of gas stations, ya moron!" And a long
overdue discussion has been nipped in the bud.

This issue desperately needs to be addressed. The left isn't going to fix this
problem on its own. We need broad societal support. But as it is, half the
population of the U.S. has an easy argument allowing them to dismiss proposals
from articles like this one.

------
squids
One big thing this article misses is that crime has been falling worldwide by
a similar rate as in America
([http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21582041-rich-
world-s...](http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21582041-rich-world-seeing-
less-and-less-crime-even-face-high-unemployment-and-economic)).

So prisons do disproportionately imprison the lower classes and far far too
many people are put in disgusting prisons to be tortured and treated like
subhumans in the US but that doesn't necessarily mean it has caused the big
drop in crime.

------
jackpirate
This all makes me so sad. I wish I knew how to help change the situation.

~~~
Zigurd
If you sit on a jury, don't vote to convict on drug "crimes" or other prison-
stuffing non-violent offences short of fraud and larceny on an epic scale.

~~~
Malician
I feel that the core argument of the article is that we cannot fix the problem
through non-violent inmates. There are not enough of them. The biggest problem
is with violent inmates who none of us really want back out in society; the
problem is that the damage caused by imprisoning them is so much larger than
the improvement experienced by everyone else.

~~~
chaostheory
> the problem is that the damage caused by imprisoning them is so much larger
> than the improvement experienced by everyone else.

Is it? Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the US prison population just
0.00730843528654% of our country's total population? 0.99269156471346% of the
US population experiencing lower violent crime is a larger improvement than
the crimes suffered in prison. Wouldn't it be more effective if we just
decriminalized drug possession and just ended the drug war entirely?

~~~
lutusp
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the US prison population just
> 0.00730843528654% of our country's total population?

Citation needed. In fact, the figure is 0.94% in jail, and 2.9% in one or more
of jail/probation/parole:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_Sta...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States)

Quote: "According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), 2,266,800
adults were incarcerated in U.S. federal and state prisons, and county jails
at year-end 2011 – about 0.94% of adults in the U.S. resident population.[4]
Additionally, 4,814,200 adults at year-end 2011 were on probation or on
parole.[8] In total, 6,977,700 adults were under correctional supervision
(probation, parole, jail, or prison) in 2011 – about 2.9% of adults in the
U.S. resident population."

This means your provided figure is (a) wildly exaggerated as to its accuracy,
using far more digits than its source can justify, and (b) flat wrong to an
astonishing degree.

> Wouldn't it be more effective if we just decriminalized drug possession and
> just ended the drug war entirely?

Absolutely, many agree including me. But your figures are still wrong.

~~~
chaostheory
Oh I only counted the people actually inside a prison. I didn't think
probation or parole counted in this argument since they're not locked up.

2,266,800 / 319,000,000 = 0.710595611% Forgot to move some decimals in my
previous post

~~~
lutusp
Still wrong. The correct figure compares those incarcerated to total _adults_
in the population.

~~~
chaostheory
How is this wrong when even children benefit from keeping violent criminals
isolated from the general population? Besides accounting for just adults still
doesn't detract from my main point: the vast majority of people in the US
benefit from keeping violent felons locked up

------
cousin_it
Why not make prison more humane instead of abolishing it? Prosecute crimes
against inmates, allow independent observers inside, etc. That would also take
a lot of political courage, though.

~~~
e40
And in the "crimes against inmates" it has to be pointed out that many of them
are committed by the jailers themselves. Those crimes need to be punished with
severe penalties.

------
whiddershins
One of the things i think is missed in the proposed solution (do away with
prisons) is the problem of mob violence in general, and "mob justice" in
particular.

If people don't believe the government will punish people for crimes, they
will do it themselves. Would that result in less hyper-hell?

------
netcan
This is a part of my perspective as a European:

The prevailing system of government in the world at present is a mix of
socialism, capitalism, welfarism and the philosophically unchampioned
realpolitik practices that were picked up and spread over the years.

In any case, Europe has a philosophical heritage of socialism. It's different
flavors at different times in different places. There is also conservatism,
capitalist liberalism. All sorts. But socialism is not a bad word in Europe.
It's not like flying a swastika. It's part of the political heritage of many
parties & people of the political centre.

In any case, I think that socialism including Marx's own writings read in its
1840s political context contain valuable perspectives. That is, you can think
of the world as a self organizing playground for heroic, creative individuals
as Ayn Rand does. I dig that perspective. You can view the economy as a
mechanical ecosystem as many "modern" economists do (including Milton
Friedmanesque monetarism, Keynes, and to a lesser extent Austrian School).
That's valuable perspective too too, though far less poetic and invigorating.

Back to socialism, it's an important part of _our_ heritage. The history of
political, moral and philosophical thought. At the heart of it is class. Class
struggle. Class Consciousness. Just thinking about societal dynamics in terms
of classes.

The majority of incarcerated Americans are members of certain classes where
incarceration is common. Americans, with their allergic reactions to socialist
language avoid this construct or paradigm. Instead they think of it as
culture, or " _socio-economics_ " a watered down Marxist paradigm without much
of the richness.

Prisons, prison complexes and such have always been a class issue. Avoiding
this perspective is avoiding the clearest historical perspective of the
problem. The whole modern idea of prisons is not that old. People were not
incarcerated for decades in the 1600s. Modern prisons, correctional
institutions came into being with the industrial age to deal with the class
instability of that period. The lowest classes (beneath the working class
majority) were prone to crime, drunkenness and generally antisocial lifestyle.

Public sadism solutions (public executions and torture) gave way to forced
labour Forced labour gave way to public prisons. These were enabled by _Bigger
Government_ (to use an americanism) and a vernal super-sizing of public
institution. Along the way, exile (eg Australian & American prison colonies)
was tried and some other solutions. But it was always and still is a way of
dealing with the underclass problem. Those poor bastards who get the worst of
any societal system from Feudalism to Capitalism to Nordic Social Democracy.

Whenever I see American underclass issues bubble to an overflowing boil, from
my removed location I see class. I see people growing up in a sector of
society with certain norms and expectations. Their part of the economy and the
society is mostly defined by class. The encouragement of outliers breaking out
of this fate is admirable, but it does not change the realities of class. As
people, we continue societies that we are born into for the most part. We also
break out and rebel and redefine paradigms. But, classes are sticky. People
follow the paths laid out for them from birth.

TLDR: Americans, get over your socialism allergy. Read Marx & Trotsky. Read it
in context. Pay attention to the parts about classes in society and their role
in history. Discard the bad parts, but read it first before you determine
which parts are good and which are bad.

~~~
cousin_it
Don't attribute the gentleness of European customs to Marxism. Explicitly
Marxist countries had the highest incarceration rates in history, because
incarceration was used for class warfare with no pretense of "punishing"
people for "crimes". I grew up in one of those countries, and I want to weep
every time I see a Westerner advising someone to read Marx and Trotsky.

~~~
dragonwriter
Marxism had a broad impact beyond "explicitly Marxist countries", and all of
the latter were actually explicitly _Leninist_ , which, despite claiming
continuity with Marx, rejected core elements of Marx's theory of the necessary
conditions for socialism and substituted them with top-down paternalistic
vanguardism. (This was a general theme, even before Lenin, in Russian
"Marxism" \-- and certainly includes Trotsky, though.)

~~~
cousin_it
Let's not overcomplicate things. Marx believed in class struggle and had a
favored side in that struggle. That's quite enough. If a government believes
in class struggle and has a favored side, it's obvious that atrocities will
follow. Same as with a government that believes in a master race.

~~~
Retric
Every government picks a side in the class struggle. Saudi America and the USA
pick the rich to various degrees. Denmark chooses the lower middle class.
Comparing the two it seems like choosing the rich causes far more atrocities
their just less visible.

Unemployed to long, well sorry we no longer count you. Had your stuff stolen
at a homeless shelter well sorry we don't count you. Got picked up for being
in the wrong place at the wrong time, well feel free to tell that to the jury.
Spending a year in prison awaiting trial, sorry your right to a speedy trial
ends well before your actual trial. Prison rape? Sorry just another deterrent.
Great you got out after a mere 10 years, best of luck finding a job!

PS: Atrocity's are on an absolute scale. Just because country your not as evil
as the Khmer Rouge does not make everything ok.

~~~
eurleif
> Comparing the two it seems like choosing the rich causes far more atrocities
> their just less visible.

> US examples: Unemployed to long, well sorry we no longer count you. Had your
> stuff stolen at a homeless shelter well sorry we don't count you. Spending a
> year in prison awaiting trial, sorry your right to a speedy trial ends well
> before your actual trial.

These are your examples of atrocities which are supposed to be comparable to
those in communist countries? Seriously?

~~~
pessimizer
"Seriously?" is not an argument. Neither is 'oh, please' or 'you must be
really stupid to believe that' (for future reference.)

edit: If you feel the need to downvote this comment, pretend that it was
"Whatever - communism wasn't so bad." and upvote it instead.

~~~
eurleif
"Seriously?" was not my argument. My argument was that there have been far
worse atrocities in communist countries than the problems described in the US.
I didn't really think I needed to be specific, because it's common
knowledge... but if you insist, here's your history lesson:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes)

~~~
Karunamon
It does not necessarily follow that commnist/marxist ideology _on its own_ was
the cause of the atrocities. In fact, i'd say there's a good argument that
they were ultimately caused by ignorant power-seekers misapplying the ideology
for their own benefit.

~~~
eurleif
>It does not necessarily follow that commnist/marxist ideology on its own was
the cause of the atrocities.

Nor does it necessarily follow that capitalism on its own is the cause of the
problems in the US that were being compared to communist atrocities.

------
curlyfrosurfer
Are there any resources to help alleviate this problem? A very close associate
of mine has just been put away for a white collar offense to a private prison
black hole, and I hope that noone has to suffer like he has

------
daveloyall
Thank you, Mr. Glazek, for the concept of hyperhell.

