
Too many laws, too many prisoners - gruseom
http://www.economist.com/node/16636027?story_id=16636027
======
jsdalton
There's one single paragraph in this entire article that addresses the root of
the problem:

> In 1970 the proportion of Americans behind bars was below one in 400,
> compared with today’s one in 100. Since then, the voters, alarmed at a surge
> in violent crime, have demanded fiercer sentences. Politicians have obliged.
> New laws have removed from judges much of their discretion to set a sentence
> that takes full account of the circumstances of the offence. Since no
> politician wants to be tarred as soft on crime, such laws, mandating minimum
> sentences, are seldom softened. On the contrary, they tend to get harder.

On top of that, you also have an entrenched set of special interests who
benefit from the status quo (police unions, prison guard unions, private
prisons, etc.), so the pressure on politicians is from two sides.

So how do you "solve" a problem that special interests, along with a sizable
majority of the voting population, have no interest whatsoever in solving?

Without a massive culture shift, you don't.

~~~
ugh
US incarceration are ridiculous and irrational. Why are European countries and
Japan so different, though? They also have elected politicians and special
interest groups, what’s going on there?

I think it mostly has something to do with the directness of democracy, not
with a difference in opinion or mentality.

Democracy in the US is very local and direct, politicians can actually be
punished by the voters for not being tough on crime. That’s not so easy in
(for example) Germany. You vote predominantly for parties – the whole package
– not politicians. Something as comparatively unimportant as criminal law is
going to get swamped by all the other issues, hardly anybody will focus on the
particular weak spots of one lowly member of parliament. That would be a waste
of effort.

Moreover all decisions about the criminal law are made on the federal level,
in commissions full of experts (a lot of academics: criminologists,
psychologists …). There is no reason for politicians in those commissions not
to follow their recommendations. Voters will hardly ever notice what they
decide, it is going to get lost under all the other issues.

You can actually be successful as a German politician who has a image for
being tough on crime on the very local level (in, say, a city state), but on
that level you can do no more than strictly enforce the rules that already
exist. That will hardly change incarceration rates, though.

You don’t need a culture shift, you need a different political system :)

~~~
_politicalist
Actually, the incumbency rate for the House of Representatives has been well
over 90%, due to corporate financing, redrawing districts, etc.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_stagnation_in_the...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_stagnation_in_the_United_States)

As for Germany, it seems there's a lot more political choice, even at the top
levels. Due to a greater diversity of parties, which more accurately reflects
people's opinions than the US's two-party system. In my view, the US isn't
particularly democratic, and anyway all of these nations have top-down
"democracies."

~~~
stretchwithme
I agree. And choice is even greater in Switzerland. You and your neighbors can
even move your neighborhood to a different cantons.

These laws come from DC and the states have lost a lot of the power they had
initially. The federal government had a list of powers. They call them the
enumerated powers. The states had everything else.

And the citizens could leave a state if they didn't like it. A lot easier to
do than leaving the country.

Which is why local laws are not really that oppressive, even if they are. But
federal law is all encompassing and difficult for you to influence. They can
pretty much ignore the individual and usually do, except when they need
something to grandstand about.

~~~
shalmanese
HOAs are even more local and yet they can have some of the most restrictive
regulations around. I don't think your thesis holds.

~~~
yalurker
I think you misunderstand the parent post, HOAs are actually a perfect
supporting example. Even the most tyrannical HOA rule isn't actually that bad,
because you can just move a few blocks away to a less-strick HOA or a house
with no HOA at all.

However, if a law is passed at the federal level, you're pretty much stuck
with it. With local (or hyper-local like HOAs) you can vote with your feet by
moving.

------
macemoneta
In the United States, the problem started with the war on drugs. The
increasing privatization of the prison system made crime a business
opportunity, which in turn lead to more things being criminalized.

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/54/US_...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/54/US_incarceration_timeline-
clean.svg/1000px-US_incarceration_timeline-clean.svg.png)

But that's not all; prison labor is now used as cheap labor to compete with
foreign countries, instituting a new age of under-the-radar slavery.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwT6CisM0mU>

The more you look at this cyclic process, the more disturbing it becomes.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Another major part of the problem is that we no longer institutionalize most
of the mentally ill (also a phenomenon starting around 1960-70). Many of them
become homeless, and a few commit crimes.

~~~
jberryman
America has never had a working mental health infrastructure; we stopped
institutionalizing people because American mental institutions in the 40s were
about the most horrible things you can imagine:

[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1220177...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122017757)

I think the history of our neglect as a society of the mentally ill has little
to tell us about crime and a lot to tell us about the homeless underclass in
America.

To digress: I just visited DC again a couple weeks ago. You go in a public
bathroom right outside the Washington Monument and there are big signs next to
the sinks that say "NO BATHING". I felt ashamed.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>there are big signs next to the sinks that say "NO BATHING". I felt ashamed.

Sorry, I'm not clear what you're ashamed of? That there are people that would
want to wash in the sinks or that they are not allowed to?

I don't think it would be a fair description of all homeless people to say
they belong to an underclass.

~~~
scrod
>Sorry, I'm not clear what you're ashamed of?

It doesn't bother you to be a citizen of a country that has allowed so many
people to lose their homes that bathing in a public restroom is now a nuisance
frequent enough to warrant official signage?

------
Alex63
As a person with essentially libertarian views, this is a very interesting
article. I may be too quick to applaud this article because it supports my own
views, but I think it raises a number of legitimate concerns. In particular, I
was struck by this point: _In many criminal cases, the common-law requirement
that a defendant must have a mens rea (ie, he must or should know that he is
doing wrong) has been weakened or erased._ This is a slope that we have been
sliding down for some time. While ignorance of the law has generally been
excluded as a defense in criminal cases, our system of laws is becoming so
convoluted that it is almost impossible to know and understand the applicable
law. Thus we are all at risk. It feels like we keep inching closer to a
society where everyone is either a dependent of the state, or at risk of
becoming one through regulation and/or prosecution.

~~~
nickpinkston
Yea, I would generally agree with you. The problems of the law is that it's
largely made and enforced in a arbitrary and over-complicated way.

On a startup side, there is actually is a big difference between common law
(e.g. Anglo) and civil law (e.g. Franco) systems - with common law being more
advantageous to entrepreneurship because of the reduced risk of arbitrary laws
- unlike precedence in common law systems.

PDF:
[http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/eblj/issues/volume1/number2/Smith.p...](http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/eblj/issues/volume1/number2/Smith.pdf)

~~~
blue1
But civil law more easily may degrade in a byzantine mess. Here in Italy there
are more than 100,000 laws (estimated, for no one really knows, and this is
just for national laws, and not including technical regulations). Which means
that no one is realistically able to understand what is right and what is not.
Under such a system, one lives with sort of a random fatalism.

~~~
Alex63
Not just random fatalism, but also greater acceptance of the idea that
individuals can pay authorities not to enforce the vast and unknowable system
of laws.

~~~
blue1
Italy is not corrupt enough for this. The law is more or less applied (more or
less also depending on the region) but in a random, chaotic, occasional
fashion, because an uniform application is really impossible. It's a bit like
the idea of sin. You shouldn't do it, but human nature is what it is. Provided
you keep within certain limits.

~~~
Alex63
You are much more familiar with the situation in Italy than I am. My comment
was based on _Codes of the Underworld_ (Diego Gambetta, 2009, Princeton
University Press). On page 70, he says:

"The wider the range of possible transgressions, the greater the amount of
potential information available for mutual blackmailing... Italy is a country
with a high level of corruption that has proved hard to explain...Italy has in
excess of 100,000 laws and regulations...The probability of living a life,
indeed of going through the day, without incurring at least one violation must
be virtually zero for Italians... It seems plausible therefore to hypothesize
that the high levels of corruption in Italy could depend on the fact that
everybody has some dirt on everybody else."

My apologies if I have been misled by this.

~~~
blue1
Actually, it _strongly_ depends on the region. I live in one of the "lawful"
ones.

------
sliverstorm
> an undercover federal agent had ordered some orchids from him, a few of
> which arrived without the correct papers. For this, he was charged with
> making a false statement to a government official, a federal crime
> punishable by up to five years in prison

What? Lying to an _undercover_ agent is criminal? Well, I guess considering
you CANNOT TELL THEY ARE AN AGENT that pretty much means lying needs to be
treated as criminal, if you are to keep yourself safe.

~~~
Ardit20
Lying can be an offence in many cases. I am not sure about criminal, but
defamation for example is basically lying about another person, so too lying
to someone about what you are selling, etc. but yeah you do make a good point.

------
tptacek
In this article I get a whiff of an agenda to challenge things like Honest
Services laws, which form part of the case against people like Conrad Black
(who bilked millions of dollars out of investors), by making reference to the
millions of people serving time for nonviolent drug offenses. This is galling.
The majority of those serving time for drug charges are imprisoned because
they lack access to skilled lawyers. White collar criminals, particularly at
the upper echelons (where virtually everyone convicted of honest services
fraud reside), uniformly evade this problem.

I suspect that if this article was accompanied with a simple pair of pie
charts representing the class of crimes under which people are imprisoned in
the US, and their economic status, it would make a simpler and more honest
point. Using poor people to spring people who've committed securities fraud
from prison is wrong.

~~~
Alex3917
The whole article is pretty questionable. Take this quote for example:

"Spending per prisoner [is] about $50,000 in California, where the cost per
pupil is but a seventh of that."

Yeah, if you count the cost of building prisons but not the cost of building
schools. And they're really using the ban on trafficking endangered species as
an example of a stupid crime? The fact that there are people in prison for
using drugs while people who catch/sell/eat bluefin tuna walk the streets
freely is an embarrassment to the country. And it's one thing to complain
about being charged for the weight of the whole cannabis plant and not just
the buds, but complaining about it being illegal to adulterate drugs is beyond
me.

~~~
anigbrowl
Prison facilities only make up about 10% of the incarceration cost.

Annual per capita costs of incarceration in California:
[http://www.lao.ca.gov/laoapp/laomenus/sections/crim_justice/...](http://www.lao.ca.gov/laoapp/laomenus/sections/crim_justice/6_cj_inmatecost.aspx?catid=3)

[http://www.lao.ca.gov/analysis_2008/education/ed_anl08006.as...](http://www.lao.ca.gov/analysis_2008/education/ed_anl08006.aspx#zzee_link_1_1202764956)

Education costs are a bit higher than the article suggests, and you are right
that they would increase further if building expenses were included. Part of
the problem is that most spending is controlled at the county level and many
people oppose centralizing education spending or policy at the state or
federal level.

Other interesting data can be found at the links provided, albeit a year or
two behind the latest budget #s.

~~~
Alex3917
How has the cost of providing healthcare gone from $468 to $8768 in 8 years?

~~~
anigbrowl
Several factors: aging of the inmate population (and higher probability of
chronic illness, but people imprisoned under 3 strikes cannot b released on
medical parole); higher cost of care in general, for the same reason that
health insurance costs have risen; and large payouts for wrongful-death
lawsuits due to medical negligence, and subsequent overhaul of prison care.
Medical and pharmaceutical services are usually provided by specialty
companies that sell both clinical and security expertise. Being a prison
doctor pays about $250k/year. Most of the expense goes on a very small
percentage of the prisoners, as end-of-life care is the most expensive kind.

[http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-05-19/news/20904260_1_sick-i...](http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-05-19/news/20904260_1_sick-
inmates-care-costs-health-care)

------
boredguy8
The prison-industrial complex is big business, and its political influence is
huge. The California Correctional Peace Officers Association in California is
scary. They massively outspend other unions in CA: at 1/10th the membership
size of the state teacher's union, they spend as much or more annually on
lobbying and campaign contributions. Lobbying by the CCPOA led to the passage
of the nation's 'toughest' 3-strikes law. Most prison guards in CA earn over
$70,000 annually and corrections is 11.2% of the state budge.

[http://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publications/abstract.aspx?ID=15271...](http://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publications/abstract.aspx?ID=152718)

------
todayiamme
India is far worse. Down here if you're rich enough then the law is your
private servant. However, if you're poor then you might just end up serving
more than 7 years as an _under trial_ before your court day. It doesn't matter
if you're innocent or guilty if you're poor. If you're arrested you have to
serve time as an under trial due to the byzantine system.

I wish there were some accurate up to date statistics I could link to, but the
inaccurate ones themselves are quite telling
(<http://ncrb.nic.in/PSI2007/prison2007.htm>). More than 54245 people were
imprisoned for being under trial in 2007. The irony is that if you're well-
connected then you don't even need to spend your time in jail if convicted.
The press has a ball with such cases and they are decreasing, but they still
exist.

On the other hand, I think that a country's justice system is a mirror of the
society in which it operates. My real father was a lawyer in Germany and he
once explained to me just how different the legal systems of different nations
are and just how intertwined they are with the political climate of a country
(he's currently doing his PhD on immigration and its socio-economic side-
effects which include crime, education etc).

Perhaps, the rise of convictions in the US is a result of a society that wants
results fast.Without doubt those tax dollars would reap higher returns if they
are wisely invested in programs that benefit those in poverty. The ghettos are
the root of a lot of crime, and if their conditions are improved and they're
given a lifeline then slowly over time things will change. The problem is that
just like in India it is far more impressive to be "tough on crime", than to
work at a solution that will take longer than your term in office to give
returns.

The same would apply to a lot of other debates. It is so easy to apply a
quick-fix, but so difficult to improve something with decades of hard-work. An
interesting question is that if there are any countries at all whose culture
promotes such things?

P.S. - This paragraph just broke my heart;

>>>But in prison she found she was pregnant. _After going through labour
shackled to a hospital bed, she was allowed only 48 hours to bond with her
newborn son._ She was released in March, found a job in a shop, and is hoping
that her son will get used to having her around.<<<

I really don't understand how people can treat other human beings like this?

------
huangm
Comparing the growth rates is pretty sobering:

    
    
                        1980   2010
     US Population      226MM  307MM  =  ~36% growth
     US Prison Inmates  0.5MM  2.3MM  =  ~360% growth

------
kiba
I think we have seen for ourselves how dangerous democracies can be when mixed
with fears.

Alas, people will continue to argues that democracy is the best form of
government despite its various flaws.

~~~
anigbrowl
as opposed to what? Every time I try to come up with an answer for that
question I get stuck at 'dictatorship headed by the fairest and wisest person
I know.' It's probably just a coincidence, but that person usually turns out
to be me :)

What's your alternative good?

~~~
blahblahblah
Personally, I think random selection would produce a better result than the
system we currently have. Select the legislature by lottery. Pick N (where N
is some fixed integer designated by law for a each political office)
candidates for each office by a random lottery, selected from a pool of
everyone who has ever served jury duty. Re-roll for anyone who declines to
serve or is currently incarcerated, in a coma, etc. (Obviously, the
particulars of the exclusion rules have to be made very explicit so that
nobody can exert undue influence by arbitrarily disqualifying people they
don't like.) Give each candidate a fixed amount of government funding for
their campaign. Nobody is allowed to solicit campaign contributions of any
kind or permitted to spend their own money, so everyone is on an even playing
field. The quantity of funding depends solely on the particular office that
the person is running for. You don't get to choose what office to run for;
there is a lottery for each individual office. If you are selected as a
candidate for an office by the lottery, you are ineligible for other lotteries
for that election year. The candidates run their campaigns. The voters pick
the winner for each office by condorcet voting.

~~~
cromulent
My Dad used to propose the jury duty system of democratic representation - you
don't get elected, you get randomly drawn - not as a candidate, but as a
member of parliament. Shorter terms, but a larger parliament. Interesting to
think about, but somewhat impractical, I guess.

~~~
blahblahblah
I assume you mean it's impractical in terms of all the changes that would be
required to get from the current U.S. system of government to a jury duty
republic system because of the significant changes to the Constitution that
would be required and the near impossibility of passing constitutional
amendments, particularly given the extreme opposition that the entrenched
ruling class would have towards such a system (because the primary goal of
such a system is to uproot an entrenched ruling class and replace it with
something more egalitarian).

However, suppose for a moment that you're the revolutionary leader of a small
nation in Latin America and, after a long struggle, you have risen victorious
over the oppressive old regime of your country and there is overwhelming
public support for you to become dictator. But, being aware of the inherent
long term problems of dictatorships, you don't want to be a dictator. So, you
declare, "We will implement a constitutional republic like the Americans. But,
to ensure our government always has the best interests of our people at heart
and we are never again dominated by an elite ruling class, we will choose our
representatives in the legislature by a lottery like the American PowerBall."
What, then, would be impractical about implementing a jury duty system of
democratic representation?

~~~
cschneid
Problems that I see revolve around the formalities of office. Learning your
way around legislation, the formats, styles, trade-offs, and compromises that
must be made all require time.

Beyond that, you run into the problem of lobbyists. Not the evil type that is
a stand-in for the word "corruption", but instead the legitimate "education"
type lobbyists. You lose much of the institutional knowledge that prevents
candy coated views of the world from taking hold. Honestly, how many of the
randomly selected people are going to understand the trade-offs of each and
every policy, be it economic, societal, political, industrial, trade,
environmental, etc. Having experienced people who have been around a few
cycles provides a base level of knowledge.

------
zemaj
I live in Australia and have been planning to migrate to the US in the near
future. However this article has genuinely made me reconsider.

I knew there was an incarceration problem in the US, but I didn't realise it
was this bad.

~~~
rsheridan6
If you aren't a criminal, you're probably about as likely to be incarcerated
in the US as you are to be eaten by a crocodile in Australia. If I were you
about be more worried about American crime rates than incarceration rates.

~~~
cromulent
The chance of being eaten by a crocodile in Australia is about 1 in 20m in any
given year (a lot less if you stay in the lower 2/3s of the country,
essentially zero for > 95% of the population).

The article above indicates that many innocent people in the US are encouraged
to plead guilty. I'm inclined to believe the opposite.

~~~
rsheridan6
That was one of the 99.9% of statistics that were made up on the spot. The
point is that being incarcerated for no reason is way down on the list of
worries for Americans who aren't criminals - far below random encounters with
criminals who haven't been incarcerated, for example.

And where does the article does not indicate that many innocent people in the
US are encouraged to plead guilty?

~~~
cromulent
"Innocent defendants may plead guilty in return for a shorter sentence to
avoid the risk of a much longer one. A prosecutor can credibly threaten a
middle-aged man that he will die in a cell unless he gives evidence against
his boss. This is unfair, complains Harvey Silverglate, the author of “Three
Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent”. If a defence lawyer offers
a witness money to testify that his client is innocent, that is bribery. But a
prosecutor can legally offer something of far greater value—his freedom—to a
witness who says the opposite. The potential for wrongful convictions is
obvious."

~~~
rsheridan6
That's a theoretical possibility, not an indication that it's actually
happening to many people.

------
noonespecial
I always thought the tin-hats ought to love this as a conspiracy much more
than ufo's or big brother mind control.

Its a perfect setup.

1) Pick a minority with an easily identifiable physical trait (so your beat
cops don't have to be too bright)

2) Encourage a set of behaviors through entertainment culture that are unique
to them, easily identifiable, and just distasteful enough to garner popular
support against them without destabilizing society.

3) Arrest them en-mass and incarcerate them in private prisons.

4) Hella-profit. Channel a portion back to #2. Repeat.

------
b-man
If anyone is interested in digging further in the subject, I highly recommend
this documentary[1].

[1] War on Drugs (The Prison Industrial Complex) --
[http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=864268000924014458&#...</a>

------
TGJ
The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals.
Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many
things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without
breaking laws. Ayn Rand

How many laws are really necessary? It's like hate crimes. Is not every crime
a hate crime of some sort? Do we really need a specific hate crime? No. But
what is happening is the public crying out for the government to do something
about the crime in the nation. Since the government cannot take any proactive
action the only thing left is to make more laws.

Where the problem lies is not the lack of laws but the lack of teeth in the
laws. Real punishments need to happen when laws are broken. Chain gangs,
whipping and execution need to happen simply to tell every potential
lawbreaker that there will be real punishments when laws are broken. As it is
now, there are people that commit crimes just to be sent to jail because of
the lax atmosphere in the penal system.

------
lakeeffect
The privatization of prisons is a huge problem whether people want to face it
or not. Its a serious problem when people can make profits from having people
put in their prisons. The only motivation is to increase profits by having a
high utilization of the prisons, by increasing frequency and length of prison
terms.

------
dotcoma
building jails is a great business in America :(

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Why is that? I can't understand why you'd need to pay $50k to house a
convicted criminal where does all the money go - anyone got a breakdown of
expenses?

If you allow private corp to build the prison you're always going to get
screwed, they can increase the cost per capita each year just short of the
amount where it will be worth using another supplier or building your own.
That's a big yearly increase.

~~~
dotcoma
>If you allow private corp to build the prison you're always going to get
screwed, they can increase the cost per capita each year just short of the
amount where it will be worth using another supplier or building your own.

isn't that just about exactly what happens in America? :-(

------
known
Too many laws, too much corruption.

------
zeynel1
but why do you look at this as a united states issue - this a --human-- rights
issue - when an unhuman living organism -the government- takes away the
freedom of -human- individual this proves once again that human individual
lives in a human plantation -the flag-states who owns all the rights to human
individual- and human individual is the -slave- of that unhuman organism
called the flag-state - the fact that you have not been incarcerated by the
flag-state who owns all your rights - does not mean that your freedom has not
been violated - this is really a fundamental problem that humans do not yet
realize --because-- the unhuman organism successfully keeps humanity -divided-
and humans do not yet realize that unhuman organisms are -living- organisms
without body -or- bodiless humans - until humans recognized the fact that
there were -invisible- organisms called viruses - they could not fight viruses
- now it is time to recognize that there are -invisible- living organisms that
are -bigger- than humans

the unhuman organism has no right over human body - let the government -catch-
the criminal who offended a human body - and then deliver him to the family
who was offended - deliver the offender to the -human- relatives - if the
criminal goes to jail - he spends his time in the gym - he watches tv - he is
fed - he doesnt have to work - he is with people like himself - he is actually
--happy-- in prison - prison is --not-- a deterrent - catch the killer and
hand him to the -mother-
[http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2010/06/01/2010-06-...](http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2010/06/01/2010-06-01_mother_of_yu_yao_chinese_immigrant_killed_in_pipe_attack_charges_accused_killer_.html)
the mother will not let the killer spend time in the gym or watch tv or feed
him - she will ---torture--- him until he begs her to -kill- him but she will
not kill him as long as she lives - and this is what he deserves - this is
what i call a deterrent - this is what i call justice - if you killed someones
daughter you dont want to be handed to the mother - this is justice

------
isnoteasy
Sorry but I don't like the title, the number of laws is not correlated to the
number of prisoners. So I would prefer a title that try to explain why there
are so many people behind bars.

~~~
sorbus
Titles are generally considered secondary to the article, and are often used
to grab attention (in the style of newspaper headlines). And expecting a title
(a single sentence, at most!) to explain why there are so many people behind
bars is a bit illogical.

~~~
isnoteasy
Another title: "More people in jail because they don't know how to sum", do
you note any difference.

A not sound title is an indicator of a not sound argument.

------
davidw
How is this germane to hacking and/or startups?

PS, voting me down won't make the article any more on-topic, and it doesn't
matter anyway, I have oodles of this karma shit, and if I have to burn it
pointing out the reddit-bait, so be it.

~~~
obsaysditto
from: <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

_On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes
more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the
answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity._

I think this would fit under intellectual curiosity, but who's to judge.

~~~
davidw
Voting up political articles because of "intellectual curiousity" is a cop-
out, and you'll get reddit if you go there.

This is very clearly one of those articles that people vote up because they
like the message and it gets them fired up, rather than because they didn't
know these things (unless of course they happen to reside under a rock).

