
United States incarceration rate - ap22213
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate
======
subsystem
"It's not a war on drugs, don't ever think it's a war on drugs. It's a war on
the blacks, it started as a war on the blacks," says Ed Burns, the co-creator
of the television show The Wire. "It's now spread [to] the Hispanics and poor
whites, but initially it was a war on blacks. And it was designed, basically,
to take that energy that was coming out of the civil rights movement and
destroy it."

[http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestoryus2012/2012/0...](http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestoryus2012/2012/08/2012823103039675592.html)

~~~
enraged_camel
Not sure why your comment was downvoted, since it's essentially true.

They call it War on Drugs, because "War on Blacks" would be racist and "War on
the Poor" would be admitting to class warfare.

Think about the simplest example: crack vs. powder cocaine. Prior to 2010,
there was a 100:1 ratio on the Federal penalties for the two types of the same
drug. Crack cocaine also carried a five year mandatory minimum. Officially,
this was based on Congress's belief that crack was more dangerous than powder.
Unofficially, it was because crack was much, much more common among blacks and
Hispanics, whereas powder was often consumed by rich white people.

In 2010 Obama reduced the disparity to 18:1 and removed the mandatory
sentencing on crack. The disparity is still crazy racist however.

~~~
nawitus
But countries which have >99% white population have similar policies as the
United States on drugs, so the race theory doesn't seem to be correct.

~~~
coldtea
> _But countries which have >99% white population have similar policies as the
> United States on drugs, so the race theory doesn't seem to be correct._

They have similar policies but not the same policies.

And even when they are the same, they execute them differently.

No country has even close to the American incarceration rate for mere drug
use.

~~~
youngerdryas
These numbers are from 2008, and quite a few states have decriminalized pot,
so I wouldn't get quite too excited. Also it is probably just coincidental
that crime peaked just as incarceration rates went up and crime rates
continued to decline as incarceration increased.

------
andrewcooke
it struck me this morning, thinking about the (justified, imho) anger at the
way swartz and the nuclear protesters were treated, that those are both cases
of the white, middle class receiving the kind of treatment previously reserved
for poor black males.

i'm not american, and not a sociologist, so this is only my impression (of
course). i wondered if it rang true for others?

~~~
Anechoic
_i wondered if it rang true for others?_

(Black male American citizen here). Yes, that was pretty much the the reaction
I had (you can look at some of my posts in the Swartz submissions). I've spend
most of my adolescent, teenage and adult life being subject to extra scrutiny
by police and private security, presumably due to the combination of my gender
and skin color ("presumably" since I didn't do anything wrong) and whenever I
point this out on various geek/tech sites like Reddit or Slashdot, posters
respond that this scrutiny is justified. Welcome to my world.

The other interesting thing I notices is that in response to all the various
privacy intrusions that may be possible with Google Glass (and Google's
possibly futile attempts to limit these uses but banning facial recognition
apps and requiring the camera light to be on when recording) the techie
response is basically "resistance is futile, technology will find a way, get
used to it." The PRISM program is an example of the same thing - technology
will find a way. The obvious difference is that in one example it's
corporations or private individuals creating the violations while in the other
it's the government, but in terms of the disruptive effects it can have on my
life (and my recourse in light of those effects) to me it's a distinction
without a difference.

This is the brave new world for some of you. Get used to it.

(btw, has Stallman spoken publically about Glass?)

~~~
pkinsky
Re Google Glass:

Do you think that security forces would be less able to violate your rights if
all interactions with them recorded? Alternatively, do you think video logs of
interactions with oppressive security forces might spark public outrage in a
way that mere eyewitness testimony would not?

~~~
sitkack
Once it came to light that they were recorded, I would think they would slap
an additional wiretapping violation and then move to have the video evidence
suppressed.

~~~
maxwell
In the States, the Supreme Court hasn't opposed recording of police officers
(so far):

[http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-
suprem...](http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-supreme-
court-rejects-plea-to-prohibit-taping-of-police-20121126,0,686331.story)

Video is becoming mightier than violence.

------
beloch
There are certainly problems with the for-profit prison industry. For example:

1\. Is it reasonable to expect a corporation that wants to expand its
"clientele" to rehabilitate prisoners into law-abiding citizens rather than
repeat offenders?

2\. Is it really a surprise that the prison industry has managed to reform the
law to drum up business in a country where Mickey Mouse will _never_ enter the
public domain?

~~~
yummyfajitas
The incentives for (2) are reduced by privatization. Any individual prison
operator can sit around freeloading while the other guys lobby for harsher
laws.

In contrast, in a system with government run prisons, the prison guard union
has strong incentive for rent seeking - they will capture all the rents.

Privatization has problems, but this isn't one of them.

------
sitkack
A couple clicks away and come across this,
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal).

------
csense
> a woman who has been recently released from prison comes into a society that
> is not prepared structurally or emotionally to welcome her back

To me, this was the most important statement in the article (although I think
this issue affects all prisoners more-or-less equally, regardless of gender).

I was reading a story recently about a Wells Fargo employee who was fired
after seven years on the job, when his employer discovered that he once put a
fake dime in a washing machine nearly fifty years ago.

If we as a society decide, through our laws and legal system, that someone is
not sufficiently dangerous that they need to _stay_ in jail (or be executed),
we should make every effort to be sure that person becomes a productive,
functioning member of society again. That outcome is in the best interests of
_everyone_ (well, maybe not private prison operators, but that issue's another
discussion entirely).

But if people are refused jobs, education, passports, government assistance,
etc. due to a criminal record, how are they supposed to recover their lives?
How are they supposed to feed themselves or their families?

We need to be more forgiving of people's past. I think this will be inevitable
as people become more searchable due to the Internet and social media -- not
everyone has a criminal record, but everyone makes mistakes, and as a greater
fraction of the population has a greater fraction of their past in public
view, more and more of those mistakes will become visible, until it won't be
possible to find _anyone_ who's "perfect."

~~~
chongli
>But if people are refused jobs, education, passports, government assistance,
etc. due to a criminal record, how are they supposed to recover their lives?
How are they supposed to feed themselves or their families?

I think the answer is basic income. We're at a point right now where the
demand for labour is so low that people's lives are subject to the whims of
fickle employers. This problem will continue to grow as automation makes more
and more people redundant. It will take the economic pressure off the less
fortunate and open the doors to their future.

With basic income we can turn productivity gains into a force for benefitting
all people. We can free the creative masses from the mundane and unnecessary.
We can build a labour market that is less regulated and more competitive.
Capitalism functions best when its participants are able to make free choices.

~~~
csense
By "basic income," I assume you mean the government pays everyone enough to
live. Welfare by another name.

What keeps people from just taking the money and doing nothing?

 _Some_ fraction of people will probably always want to work because a job
makes them happier, or they desire the luxuries that the increased income
makes possible. But in the time between now and the techno-utopia where robots
and computers do all the work, how do we know that this fraction will always
be big enough? Why won't our society won't collapse due to too many people
opting to live on the public dime, and there not being enough workers left to
produce the food, clothing, shelter, etc. needed by the non-workers?

Isn't this basically how communism collapsed?

------
yummyfajitas
Consider a thought experiment. Suppose 2% of country A has committed a crime,
and 1% of country B has. Suppose both countries have _identical_ criminal
justice systems - say they catch 80% of criminals, and have a false positive
rate of 0.25%.

In that case, country A has 1.845% of their population in jail, while country
B has only 1.05%.

I'm not saying this is the only cause of the US's high incarceration rate, I'm
just pointing out that some stats are missing from this discussion.

(Interestingly, 30% of the people in jail in B are falsely accused, while only
15% of the people in jail in A are.)

~~~
ezy
You have to be very self-critical when proposing thought experiments.
Typically, they end up having no connection with reality (attempts to make
variables independent which really aren't), I'm not sure it's productive to
think like this unless you're really super-guarded about your assumptions.

You're assuming a 1% absolute difference could easily exist given equal laws,
enforcement, and penalties. If you say you're just asserting that for purposes
of the experiment, you still can't say anything because the assertion may well
be nonsense.

You're assuming you can tease it apart (e.g. existing laws and enforcement's
influence on criminal culture) such that stats are "missing", it's not clear
that you can. In fact, evidence (prohibition) more likely says you can't.

~~~
yummyfajitas
I'm assuming a 1% difference could exist holding everything else constant
simply to make the example simple. I explicitly disclaimed the idea that my
thought experiment was a good picture of the world.

My key point - looking at incarceration rates while ignoring criminality rates
is ignoring half the picture. Do you disagree with this point?

~~~
scotty79
Criminality rates heavily depend on what's considered criminal behavior and
how criminal.

------
gdonelli
Sounds like incarceration is a profitable business to me...

~~~
jkuria
Very profitable indeed. And the companies that profit from it have been big
campaign donors.

~~~
gdonelli
that's really sad :(

------
hammerzeit
My fundamental question here comes back to this: If the number of reported
crimes in the country doubled, what would you expect to happen to the prison
population?

In the time period that the incarceration rate in the USA grew 4x, the number
of violent crimes in the US grew nearly 7x [1]. This was a much more dangerous
country then. The incarceration _per crime_ rate is only about 25% higher than
it was in 1960 [2].

None of which to say there is not something deeply, deeply flawed in our
country today and in the way we deal with imprisonment. Similarly there are
real fundamental issues of race and class that make crime and enforcement
problematic.

That said, we seem to look at institutions more than society when we look at
social ills. But just like with healthcare and education, the two are
inseparable -- we must consider the priors.

[1]: Data sourced from two sources, focusing on 1960-1994:
[http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm](http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm)
and
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rat...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate)

[2]
[http://www.crimeandconsequences.com/crimblog/documents/pictu...](http://www.crimeandconsequences.com/crimblog/documents/pictures/ViolentCrimePrison1960_2006.jpg)

~~~
whiddershins
Are you 100% certain that the definition of violent crime isn't a moving
target? It sounds so cut and dry, but is it?

Also, are you 100% certain that this doesn't reflect a change in what people
are charged with, rather than their actual behavior? Have you any experience
with prosecutorial discretion and how that affects what people are charged
with, and hence, the "crime rate."

~~~
hammerzeit
I certainly don't, and I think these are important and fascinating questions.

Do you have any evidence to suggest the definition of violent crime has
changed at all? I'd be very curious if that were the case. In the absence of
evidence, though, I'll continue going with what I understand to be the
generally-accepted theory that crime rose dramatically throughout the 1970s
and 1980s.

~~~
whiddershins
Anecdotally, we Americans are considerably less tolerant of violence that we
were decades ago. What used to be a "pop in the nose" in now assault. What
used to be a schoolyard scuffle is now a suspension, counseling, and possibly
medication, possibly arrest.

Whether that has any bearing whatsoever on crime stats, I have no idea. It
could even be a response to crime going down, or completely unrelated.

It would be really interesting to try to figure it out.

------
olalonde
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Violent_crime_rates_by_gen...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Violent_crime_rates_by_gender_1973-2003.jpg)

This is quite surprising if accurate. I would have thought the rate of violent
crime for men would be much higher than women but they are about the same.

~~~
Symmetry
Men do commit nearly all of the violent crimes against strangers, but women
commit violence against acquaintances at roughly similar rates to men. My
impression is that violence against strangers has decreased quite a bit over
the last couple of decades but that domestic violence has remained steady, so
I'd expect that graph based on composition effects.

I suspect that the gap in murder rates is higher since due to size differences
random male on female violence is more likely to be fatal than vice versa. For
instance a male acquaintance of mine's ex-girlfriend snuck into his room at
night and stabbed him, but thankfully she wasn't able to get the knife through
his ribcage and he lived. If the genders had been reversed it might very well
have gone differently.

~~~
scotty79
Your acquintance really lucked out. I think his case was an outlier. Rates of
murder in countries with and without guns are pretty much the same because the
barrier is not the tools. It's fairly easy to kill with any tools. The only
thing that saves us from being mudered are mental blocks against murdering tht
almost all people have in their brains.

------
gre
Capitalism finds a way to make everything profitable eventually. Iterate,
optimize, and you have the perfect machine where some are at the controls and
the rest are fuel.

------
ommunist
Gulag was very small thing comparing to this contemporary enslaving machine.

------
wtvanhest
This seems like something that people will look back on 100 years from now and
state how bazaar and awful it was. How do we start the process of turning this
around?

Is anyone on HN involved in any organization trying to stop this?

~~~
ericabiz
Yes: [http://norml.org/](http://norml.org/)

Please join, support, rally with NORML for better drug laws.

The facts: 55% of federal prisoners are held for drug law violations

21% of state prisoners are held for drug law violations

via
[http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Marijuana#sthash.LTU05KnJ.dp...](http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Marijuana#sthash.LTU05KnJ.dpbs)

Legalization doesn't just help people who smoke pot--it helps ALL of us, by
reducing prison time and incarcerations, especially sentences due to simple
marijuana possession.

EDIT: More facts via
[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2109777,00....](http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2109777,00.html)

"Drug convictions went from 15 inmates per 100,000 adults in 1980 to 148 in
1996, an almost tenfold increase. More than half of America's federal inmates
today are in prison on drug convictions. In 2009 alone, 1.66 million Americans
were arrested on drug charges, more than were arrested on assault or larceny
charges. And 4 of 5 of those arrests were simply for possession."

~~~
300bps
Seems balancing the budget is a simple matter of legalizing drugs. Attacks the
spend side through fewer prosecutions and incarcerations. Use the money from
drug taxes to pay for treatment programs and attacking the revenue side of the
budget deficit.

Are there really that many people in the country that are upright about drugs?
I've never done a drug in my life but I certainly don't care if others do in a
manner similar to alcohol.

~~~
noarchy
Don't be so sure about balancing the budget on the back of drug users:
[http://money.cnn.com/2013/05/10/smallbusiness/marijuana-
taxe...](http://money.cnn.com/2013/05/10/smallbusiness/marijuana-
taxes/index.html)

I've always thought that the tax argument was less than stellar. Are we really
wanting to convince government that it should legalize drugs because of the
money it could make, rather than having a society with more freedom? Is the
purpose of a government to make money?

------
MRSallee
We've been worse than modern Canada and China since at least the 1930s. Wild.

~~~
dizzystar
For those who are saying America is worse than China or Russia, mind that the
data of China and Russia's historical imprisonment data is not well-documented
and they were more prone to using executions.

Estimates vary wildly on how many people were executed, starved to death,
murdered, or imprisoned during all of the Chinese Revolutions under Mao.

I'm certainly not defending the America prison system.

~~~
coldtea
"""For those who are saying America is worse than China or Russia, mind that
the data of China and Russia's historical imprisonment data is not well-
documented and they were more prone to using executions."""

Yes, but he also didn't add the massacres and concentration camps for Native
Americans (of which, Hitler writes in his Main Kampf that it was an
"inspiring" solution to the problem), or the enslavement (any different than
prison?) of black slaves, and their executions, lynching.

~~~
jeffdavis
Those atrocities happened quite a bit earlier than 1930 (for the most part,
anyway).

~~~
aaronbrethorst
There were also the camps for Japanese people during WWII:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment)

~~~
iends
These camps are not the same as state sponsored execution.

~~~
vacri
That's what concentration camps are. You concentrate a demographic into a camp
- it's a concentration of that kind of person. 'Concentration camp' is not a
synonym for death camp.

------
oellegaard
This could be drastically reduced if the USA would implement proper social
security. I hardly think that is is coincidental that the Scandinavian
countries are generally at the bottom of the list - or e.g. Germany. It is not
really high level science, that if a person does not have income he still
needs food. If he can't buy it, the government doesn't give it - he has to
steal it.

~~~
whiddershins
I don't think it is about food. I think it is about respect. People are
violent most commonly where their dignity has been threatened. Although that
is obviously true on a case by case basis, noone seems to see a correlation
between the humiliation we make a person go through to get welfare vs. our
crime rate. It isn't that they are poor, it is because we shame them for being
poor.

Just one man's opinion.

~~~
waps
You might want to google "Maslow's hierarchy of needs" [1].

Basically, people will fight, kill and die immediately for physiological
needs, for food, water, sex, sleep and a few other things. For safety, the
average human being is still quite prepared to use lethal violence. Safety
includes security, employment, resources, morality, and health. Then less
violence is used up the pyramid. And so on you go to love/belonging, esteem
(where the respect comes in), and lastly self-actualization.

Of course this is only one theory. Other theories are based more on imitation
(people will fight/use violence in a specific situation because they see
others using violence in similar situations). That one is my personal
favourite since it makes a whole lot more sense than the psychological theory.
How would you store something as complex as Maslow's pyramid in genes ? There
is no room for anything so complex. For that matter, employment exists maybe
5000 years, human race is at the very least 165000 years old. I have visited
places where it doesn't seem to hold (villages in Africa, slums, where it
seems people are more than content with just most physiological needs and some
form of drug. Oh and they'll do a lot for different drugs, ie. for alcohol).

Of course the first part of Maslow's theory is true, by definition, people
will fight, kill and die for physiological needs. Not having them, after all,
means dying yourself. The other levels, including respect and "good" food, I
don't think work like that.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs)

~~~
whiddershins
I think if people were willing to be violent within their in-group merely
because of hunger, all of human history would have gone differently.

I am not sure Maslow is saying what you think he is saying, since after all he
grew up in Brooklyn. :-)

I would suggest reading Meditations on Violence, which is a beautifully flawed
book, including a great section outlining a theory of violence, and what
precipitates different types of violent behavior.

[http://www.amazon.com/Meditations-Violence-Comparison-
Martia...](http://www.amazon.com/Meditations-Violence-Comparison-Martial-
Training/dp/1594391181)

------
VLM
There are some startup lessons here where rates quintupled in 30 or so years
but there's a theoretical limit where we imprison around 1 percent so
quintupling can only continue about two more generations... so the explosive
growth phase "must" end within the next 60 years or so. This collapse in
growth rate will cause some interesting predictable issues in America's for
profit prison system.

As a practical matter its probably too late to begin a startup focused on the
prison industry. A prison-centric social network? A dating site for guards
and/or inmates? A prison photo blogging site?

~~~
king_jester
> As a practical matter its probably too late to begin a startup focused on
> the prison industry.

Starting any kind of business that derives revenue or profit from prisons is
massively unethical, as the existence of your business becomes dependent on
the continuation and increase of imprisonment. Such businesses do nothing to
make society better and in fact only make society worse.

~~~
dionidium
I read an article a while back about the then imminent closing of a prison in
New York that was no longer needed due to falling crime rates. There were
quotes from workers voicing their displeasure. I'll repeat that. They were
upset that crime rates were falling and fewer prisons were needed. As always,
incentives matter.

------
TomGullen
Approaching 1% of your population being incarcerated seems absurd.

~~~
vacri
If you rule out kids, it becomes 1% of adults. There was a statistic I saw a
few years ago that said that 1 in 9 black men were either incarcerated or on
parole - it was the clearest statistic showing lop-sided legal policy I've
seen.

------
oleganza
Nixon dropped gold standard in 1971 and state power started expanding like
crazy with printed money. Incarceration rate is just one of the effects of
growing violent power.

~~~
oleganza
Those who downvote are invited to provide a rational counter-argument. My
facts are:

1\. State promised to provide gold in exchange for U.S. dollars before
November 1971.

2\. After November 1971 it basically defaulted on that promise. But due to
different factors (including military domination in many countries) people
overseas kept trading in dollars, so dollar did not collapse.

3\. When money is created it gets in someone's hands who now have some
purchasing power they didn't have before (I'm not debating if it's "good" or
"bad", it's just the fact).

4\. Mainly, money is created via bonds issued by the government. So it's
mainly government who get new purchasing power (the whole point of those bonds
is to make some cash for government spending).

5\. Government is different from any corporation in a sense that it has
monopoly on violence. Only government agencies can put people in jail, use
guns on massive scale at home and in the world. Again, I'm not saying if it's
evil or "good for society", it's just the way it is.

6\. Extra purchasing power for government means more economic power to do
things that only government can do. E.g. pay policemen to chase drug dealers,
computer hackers, bitcoin traders etc.

7\. No wonder that incarceration rate grows.

Where am I wrong?

~~~
nawitus
You're wrong because there's plenty of other Western nations without the gold
standard and higher state expenditures, yet they have low incarceration rates.
The point is that there's no clear connection between your economic theory and
jail sentencing. (Of course economic policies affect sentencing a lot).

~~~
oleganza
Do you agree that if your policy is more jail-oriented, than free money will
only accelerate it?

Also, do you agree that no matter how evil your government is, without money
(taxes and/or inflation) their evilness does not mean anything - they won't be
able to execute on it.

Therefore, monetary policy accelerates whatever your government is up to. If
it already had a lot of military power, expect that to grow with cheap money
being added.

~~~
zanny
The prison industrial complex is the formulation of dozens of compounding
effects.

* The civil rights movement.

* Concentrated federal power since the first signing of the constutition to protect rich property interests (as the selfish goal, the other one was to be strong enough to resist European insurrection).

* Culture of fear, and a distrust of the "different".

* A corrections system that isn't correctional, but retributional.

So here are some reasons imprisonment rates are lower in other western
nations:

* Monocultures and single race societies (for the most part) mean more cultural congruency and less conflict. Hemp was outlawed because of Mexicians, and Crack was outlawed because of Blacks, and it let them throw vast swathes of them in jail.

* The Finnish / Sweedish / etc corrections systems are _correctional_ and rehabilitate inmates. US inmates get raped and get more access to drugs behind bars than outside them. They get into the prison culture and cycle.

* More foreign corrections systems do not engage with for profit private prisons that make money by having higher incarceration rates.

* Most foreign nations don't have a war on drugs (which is caused by the cultural animosity towards the "different").

* Other nations don't have as much blind nationalistic pride as many Americans do. I'm American - I constantly question and doubt my government. But many people in this country don't, especially those who were around to "win" the cold war.

------
tete
And compared to central Europe, how secure is the US?

