
Why prisons continue to grow, even when crime declines - Oatseller
https://news.osu.edu/news/2016/08/22/prison-growth/
======
utternerd
Stop throwing people in jail for "moral crimes" such as drug use, and we'd see
a massive decline. Victimless crimes, such as contempt of court for not being
"respectful" enough of a sitting judge, or the like should never send you to a
cage either. One could make a massive list of the ridiculous uses of our
criminal justice system, and sadly many don't see it as a problem.

~~~
Clubber
I read an article the other day where police placed a bicycle unlocked in a
public place, then watched it. Once someone took off with it, they arrested
him. Since he didn't plea bargain, the judge gave him 3 years.

A couple things:

1\. I would think either a fine or a 30 day sentence is more than enough.

2\. I think it's bad for society in general for police to actively bait people
into committing crimes.

3\. That's about $150,000 of taxpayer dollars for a $100 bicycle.

4\. Unrelated but important. In the US, it's legal for police to lie to you
about your rights, what evidence they have, or anything really. I believe that
is bad for society as well.

~~~
gajjanag
> 1\. I would think either a fine or a 30 day sentence is more than enough.

What makes you think this will deter them from repeating the crime in the
future? For a drug addict in search of a fix, bicycles have high liquidity on
the market, are easily stolen, and usually not caught. Drug habits are not
easy to kick away.

Note that I am not saying that long prison sentences are an answer for this,
just pointing out that a fine/30 day sentence will likely not work.

~~~
jchendy
What does a 3 year prison sentence accomplish that 30 days wouldn't?

~~~
gajjanag
As I pointed out above, I don't think 3 year prison sentences are an answer.

Just saying that the proposed solution of a fine/30 days sentence will likely
not decrease the rate of bike theft.

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dsfyu404ed
A lot of repeat offenders are created when they can't have a real life after
the first offense and double down on making a living out of crime. Someone who
gets their first felony for possession with intent to sell might find that the
least bad career option they have after prison is selling drugs. They when
they get arrested the next time they have priors and they go away for longer.

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astazangasta
This argument doesn't make any sense. What would be the reason for seeing more
repeat offenders other than sending more people to jail in the first place?
The statistic they're observing is a RESULT of prison growth, not the cause.
Obviously they correlate, but without the incarceration rate going up first,
this simply doesn't make any sense - the average # of prior offenses can't
increase unless the rate of conviction increases first (and must lag by the
average recidivism time), so average # of prior offenses is clearly not a
leading cause.

In any case, you can easily see that the incarceration rate grew at a pace far
in excess of the crime rates: [http://www.usprisonculture.com/blog/wp-
content/uploads/2010/...](http://www.usprisonculture.com/blog/wp-
content/uploads/2010/07/incarceration-vs-violent-crime-rate.jpg)

The whole idea that the two are related in any way, including this one, is
verkakte.

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kunle_e
"If the United States wants to reduce the number of people in our prisons,
King said these results suggest we need a new approach."

When states and municipalities are no longer incentivized to have large prison
populations and the same for law enforcement and making arrests, maybe we'll
see a reduction in the prison population.

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danielvf
Actually, the US prison population is declining in both relative and absolute
numbers, and has been for the last six years.

[http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p14.pdf](http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p14.pdf)

~~~
drawkbox
Wow this data is going down but look at this:

 _Half of males (50%) and more than half of females (59%) in federal prison
were serving time for drug offenses on September 30, 2014._

~~~
Terr_
If someone is convicted of killing 2 people and also of manufacturing and
possession of 5 pounds of meth, do they fall into the same category of
"serving time for drug offenses"?

I think the category people are _actually_ interested in is how many people
are incarcerated for _only_ drug-offenses and _only_ minor (possession, not
drug-kingpin) ones.

~~~
drawkbox
If someone killed two people they go for the murder charge I am sure of it.
Nothing wrong with locking up murderers as it is violent.

The above stats are current prisoner charges, my assumption is murderers
wouldn't be out to get a charge by making meth. But who knows they seem to be
harder on drugs than real violent crime at times (80s especially right after
the DEA was created by Nixon in '75).

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djrogers
;tldr -

FTA "Judges are dealing with more repeat offenders now"

Seems pretty straightforward then...

~~~
douche
The worst thing you could do is put a first-time offender in a prison.
Congratulations, you've taken a possibly reformable person, and thrown them
into an environment where they need to affiliate with one of the gangs to
avoid being shanked or extorted. In the meantime, they go through a networking
and educational program to give them the skills and connections to be a
criminal. Then, when they do get released and go back out into the world, they
are effectively blocked from most avenues of legitimate work, left with
severely restricted rights, and are put on restrictive probationary regimes
that seem designed to put them back behind bars.

Some days, I wonder if we wouldn't be better off just giving people ten lashes
or some other minor, non-permanent corporeal punishment for minor offenses.

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csense
Back in the day, it was hard to figure out if a person had ever been convicted
of a crime -- you'd have to go down to the right courthouse and look through a
bunch of dusty paper files. Public records were open, but you'd need to care
enough to spend a lot of time if you wanted to snoop on whether a particular
individual had a criminal history -- and the right records would have been
even harder to find if they'd been convicted in a different county or a
different state.

Now that we have computers that can index all those public records, doing
background checks on individuals has become easy enough to do it. I think I've
seen applications for even fast food jobs which ask if you've ever been
convicted of a felony.

The result of this is that, in addition to prison time, our society is _de
facto_ penalizing felons for the rest of their lives by making it a lot harder
to get many necessities -- such as employment, housing, and education. Not
because any law has made it so, but because of new behavior patterns enabled
by new technologies. It's not surprising that many one-time offenders turn to
a life of crime -- not because they want to, but because they feel that's the
only path left open to them.

The timeline in the article seems to fit with this narrative.

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rabboRubble
Many of the people coming in front of courts have a lengthy criminal history.
What it says to me is that our criminal justice system is failing at one of
its primary missions: rehabilitation. We have turned prisons into for-profit
centers with no incentive towards rehabilitation. Pair that with the US
public's interest in punishment to the exclusion of rehabilitation, you end up
with frequent flyers.

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millzlane
There is a surplus of laws for non violent/victimless crime.

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Evolved
Most, if not all, of this can be avoided first and foremost by not committing
the crime to begin with. That starts with having quality parents instilling
the right vales in their children and making sure they get a quality education
at least through high school. Furthermore, it has been asserted that college
isn't even a guarantee but learning the trades can be much more beneficial to
gainful employment.

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meetri
so, what this article is saying is that while crime has gone down, the average
offender has a much more extensive criminal record today than in the past?
Doesn't that argument contradict itself? Wouldn't that mean that the real
reason prisons continue to grow is that judges hand out more convictions for
pettier crimes than in the past?

~~~
CM30
Not really. It means there are less crimes and criminals overall, but the
criminals that do commit crimes are repeat offenders and hence have a more
extensive criminal record than before.

So a few prolific criminals vs many more occasional ones.

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kneegrown
Maybe prison deters criminal activity?

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millzlane
There is a surplus of laws for non violent crimes.

