
The Imprisoner’s Dilemma - ryan_j_naughton
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-imprisoners-dilemma/
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brudgers
_it’s hard to be a habitual offender while in prison_

To the contrary, it's rather easy because:

    
    
      + many violations of prison administrative rules
        constitute crimes.
    
      + prison is full of people inclined toward crimes
        so it is easy to find partners in crime.
    
      + there's plenty of time to think up crimes.
    
      + protecting oneself from harm often requires
        committing a crime.

~~~
bmm6o
The article - and what people in general think of as "crime" \- reasonably and
intentionally excludes crimes committed in prison. While one is in prison, one
can't habitually offend against society at large.

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brudgers
That's a great rationalization for dehumanizing people who are incarcerated.

~~~
bmm6o
That's a slanderously uncharitable reading. I happen to think the article is
spot on, I happen to think our incarceration rates are an embarrassing tragedy
and I happen to think that the poor conditions of our prisons are bad for its
all. I was merely defending not including certain crimes in certain
accounting.

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lotsofmangos
I would go further than this article's assumption about diminishing returns.

It seems clear that when it stops being rare, locking people up for minor
crime isn't merely pointless but is in fact woefully counterproductive.

Incarceration at the level seen in the USA, I believe has the net effect of
actually creating extra crime through many well documented causes, including
the destabilization of families and their extended communities, the crime-
college effect for minor offenders at the same time as a reduction in their
legal employment opportunities on release, not to mention the fact it lends
significant credence to any robin-hood style narratives any professional gang
cares to adopt, so helping them recruit.

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Terr_
Also, if you imprison a large enough portion of a group, it loses its power as
social stigma within that group.

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pavel_lishin
All the cities in the bottom most graph already looked like their crime rates
were dropping.

