# 1 out of every 150 people in the US are in prison!
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-out-of-every-150-people-in-the-us-are-in-prison/65576
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [May 16, 2001, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-out-of-every-150-people-in-the-us-are-in-prison/65576 "2001-05-16T05:42:18Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Linear\_Crack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Linear_Crack)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2001, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-out-of-every-150-people-in-the-us-are-in-prison/65576/1 "2001-05-16T05:42:18Z")
Is our country “really” in that bad of shape? Something is not right if [this](http://commondreams.org/headlines/042000-01.htm) many people are commiting crimes (and these are just the ones who get caught!).
With the U.S.[population](http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/popclock) growing at a steady rate, there HAS to be some concern that the 1:150 ratio (which is amazing to me) will soon get worse. I can’t imagine living in a country, ten years from now, where ever 50th person is in prison. I know thats a stretch, but look at the rise in prison population over the last 10 years.
Do other countries have the same dilema? Is the U.S. the crime capitol of the world? It appears our prisons are not too bad of a place to visit. (for 1.86 million people that is)
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### Author:  [@SPOOFE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SPOOFE)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2001, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-out-of-every-150-people-in-the-us-are-in-prison/65576/2 "2001-05-16T05:58:56Z")
I think a good chunk of those incarcerations are the result of anti-drug laws and 3-Strikes laws, really, resulting in a lot of people going to jail for very minor offenses.
Although I don’t have any cites to back that up… just wanted to point out that the high prison population may not be due to significant increases in crime (though I know that some areas may have experienced increased crime rates).
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### Author:  [@Freedom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freedom)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2001, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-out-of-every-150-people-in-the-us-are-in-prison/65576/3 "2001-05-16T12:33:44Z")
That’s funny, I had just the opposite thought…
> [@](#):
>
> just wanted to point out that the high prison population may not be due to significant increases in crime (though I know that some areas may have experienced increased crime rates).
My initial response was to assume the decrease in the crime rate was from increased prison populations.
But then I also wonder just how much the population would drop if we let out victims of the WOD.
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### Author:  [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2001, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-out-of-every-150-people-in-the-us-are-in-prison/65576/4 "2001-05-16T12:47:10Z")
Only 1 out of 150?
It’s a matter of perspective, I guess. Looking back at my old high school yearbook, it seems like the number ought to be higher. (In fact, I’m sure it is higher for my old classmates.)
There are some rough folks out there in the real world, my cloistered friends.
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### Author:  [@Philster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Philster)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2001, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-out-of-every-150-people-in-the-us-are-in-prison/65576/5 "2001-05-16T13:10:22Z")
Nah. Can’t be. I work with 300 people, and none of them are in prison.
Add up the security staff, the regualr staff, the parole board, the vendors (food suppliers, janitorial products), the service companies, the contractors (builders, plumbers, electricians)and everyone else needed to keep a prison running…
…and you quickly realize that we we can’t afford to stop crime!!!
Who said crime doesn’t pay?
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### Author:  [@hawthorne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hawthorne)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2001, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-out-of-every-150-people-in-the-us-are-in-prison/65576/6 "2001-05-16T14:49:46Z")
Figures for Australia (for 1998, taken from [here](http://www.aic.gov.au/research/corrections/stats/ti130-ext/)): 1: 718 (counting only those aged 18 and over), about 1: 1000 (counting everyone). Growing at about 2%.
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### Author:  [@december](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/december)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2001, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-out-of-every-150-people-in-the-us-are-in-prison/65576/7 "2001-05-16T15:08:42Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Linear Crack \*
> **Is our country “really” in that bad of shape**
Yes, I think it is. We have an extremely high crime rate. The question is what to do about it. I wish I knew.
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### Author:  [@Tars\_Tarkas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tars_Tarkas)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2001, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-out-of-every-150-people-in-the-us-are-in-prison/65576/8 "2001-05-16T15:22:13Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Is our country “really” in that bad of shape?
welcome to america! We’re Number One!!!
Part of our high crime rate has to do with our jails not being rehabilitation centers but animal cages. i would be for a bootcamp/real world skills building type of reform for many crimes (however, murderers and rapists will get the chair), that would prevent people going to prison only to learn to be better prisoners. this would not eliminate crime, but would reduce repeat offenders and over the long run would lower crime rates, improve many people’s lives, and make the world a better place.
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### Author:  [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2001, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-out-of-every-150-people-in-the-us-are-in-prison/65576/9 "2001-05-16T15:30:04Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by december \*
> \*\*
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > \*Originally posted by Linear Crack \*
> > **Is our country “really” in that bad of shape**
>
> Yes, I think it is. We have an extremely high crime rate. The question is what to do about it. I wish I knew. \*\*
How about not putting people in jail for things that, in any sane society, wouldn’t be crimes?
Understanding, of course, that I basically have the Libertarian attitude toward defining crime. One of my favorite books is _ **Ain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do** _.
Victimless crimes aren’t crimes. Period. People in jail because of the (Losing) War on Drugs or because of “sex crimes” other than rape of any stripe are the equivalent of political prisoners. The laws keep them in jail because those laws help the people who make them stay in office longer.
What’s scary is that we’re losing more and more of our Constitutional rights under the aegis of this “war” on recreational substances. Takings laws, for one. I can’t understand how conservatives can whinge about EPA regulations on land use but not twitch an eyebrow at laws that let the government confiscate and sell property on arrest for drug charges. This is currently the main source of income for some police and sheriff’s departments.
jayjay
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### Author:  [@wring](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wring)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2001, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-out-of-every-150-people-in-the-us-are-in-prison/65576/10 "2001-05-16T15:54:48Z")
crime rate data for the US shows a downward trend to most crimes in the past decade.
one of my [favorite little links](http://www.msnbc.com/modules/cnp/cnp_Front.asp) is this quick little interactive which gives mumbers of incarcerated folk in certain years, and a nifty chart pick a year (1970 - 1998 or so), and gives you the number of incarcerated folks, percentage of those for drug offenses.
Crime data has to be analyzed carefully. There’s no quick and dirty number =cause =solution (having worked in the field for 24 years). Some of the factors worth mentioning are demographics. Prisoners age - the age range of 20 - 40 is way overrepresented demographically in the prisons/jails. (tho’ with all these new 3 strikes and you’re in for life laws may change that dramatically). We baby boomers are aging out of the demographics for criminal activity. The economy has been doing well (in general) during the 90s (which has quite a bit of an effect on the crime rate)
In addition, since new laws are enacted all the time, there would be an expected increase. For example - stalking is a whole new area of legislation - in the 60’s, 70’s etc. there was no such crime. now there is. What increased was our awareness of an area of behavior that we should/could prohibit.
One thing does remain constant, however People don’t feel safe. Numbers don’t mean a whole lot if grandma refuses to go to the store by herself because she’s afraid.
Crime makes big news. People get scared.
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### Author:  [@december](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/december)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2001, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-out-of-every-150-people-in-the-us-are-in-prison/65576/11 "2001-05-16T16:03:24Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by jayjay \*
> [B
> Victimless crimes aren’t crimes. Period. … Takings laws, for one. I can’t understand how conservatives can whinge about EPA regulations on land use but not twitch an eyebrow at laws that let the government confiscate and sell property on arrest for drug charges. This is currently the main source of income for some police and sheriff’s departments.jayjay \*\*
IMHO one can make a good case for legalizing recreational drug use, but it’s optimistic to think that this would solve the problem fo too many prisoners. There’s a lot of crime associated with drugs; if they were legalized, I don’t know that all these crimes would disappear. Also, presumably the lucrative practice of selling drugs to minors would still be a serious crime.
Anyhow, most prison inmates have committed serious crimes, other than drug usage or sales, I believe. There are too many Americans who commit felonies. We can’t leave these people free and we can’t keep on increasing the prison population without limit.
BTW many conservatives are opposed to the confiscation of property without a trial. E.g, the Wall Street Journal editorial page writes about this issue from time to time.
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### Author:  [@wring](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wring)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2001, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-out-of-every-150-people-in-the-us-are-in-prison/65576/12 "2001-05-16T16:10:45Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by december \*
> \*\*[
> Anyhow, most prison inmates have committed serious crimes, other than drug usage or sales, I believe. \*\*
Once again, your assumption, belief whatever, doesn’t match the data. please see interactive I posted a moment ago re: drug felonies and prisoners.
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### Author:  [@casdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/casdave)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2001, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-out-of-every-150-people-in-the-us-are-in-prison/65576/13 "2001-05-16T17:17:14Z")
In earky Victorian Great Britain when new methods and principles of incarceration were being tried out there was a general feeling about that society was a strictly heirarchical structure and that people tended in the main to live their lives at one class level, this being cosidered ones station in life and having been born and bred to it.
Their logic was that criminals formed a class of their own and they were not capable of moving out of it, so the pragmatic solution was to send such people off top the colonies and in a short while there would be no crime whatsoever.
It took a long time, and a change in commercial requirements for what was effectively slave labour, for the flaws in this logic to be acted upon.
It almost seems that the US criminal justice system is doing the very same thing.
All I can say is that one can see a con change from day to day from what most folk would call a regular guy, excepting the obvious offence and conviction, to a selfish, manipulative, devious individual.
This is something that prison teaches well.
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### Author:  [@december](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/december)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2001, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-out-of-every-150-people-in-the-us-are-in-prison/65576/14 "2001-05-16T17:24:38Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by wring \*
> \*\*\*Originally posted by december \*
> “Anyhow, most prison inmates have committed serious crimes, other than drug usage or sales, I believe.”
>
> Once again, your assumption, belief whatever, doesn’t match the data. Please see interactive I posted a moment ago re: drug felonies and prisoners. \*\*
Not quite, wring. Your source at MSNBC (BTW thanks for that!) shows statistics on number and per cent of drug offenders **sentenced during a given year**. E.g., 58.9% of those sentenced in 1998 were drug offenders. (BTW MSNBC doesn’t actually say whether these classfied as drug offenders had committed other crimes as well.)
I was addressing the **current population of prison inmates,** a related statistic, but not necessarily the same. If drug offenders tend to receive short sentences (as compared with robbers, assaulters, murderers, etc.), then the population of inmates could be mostly non-drug offenders, even though over 50% of those sentenced in a given year were drug offenders.
Do you have any stats on the population of prisoners at a point in time?
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### Author:  [@wring](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wring)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2001, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-out-of-every-150-people-in-the-us-are-in-prison/65576/15 "2001-05-16T17:52:20Z")
for the past 10 years, most have been sentenced to prison are for drug offenses. By this time, it’s not a stretch to have ‘most’ in prison for drugs.
Most of the DOJ pages require adobe (which I can’t seem to install) and is more difficult for the average person here to use, but [heres a link](http://www.hrw.org/wr2k1/usa/#drug&race)
which includes the following
> [@](#):
>
> Prison was not reserved for notably dangerous or violent offenders: approximately 70 percent of all new admissions to state prison in 1998 (the most recent year for which data was available) were people convicted of nonviolent property, drug or public order offenses (snip) Drug offenders constituted 57.8 percent of all federal inmates.
as well as this interesting bit
> [@](#):
>
> Drug law enforcement practices that disproportionately target black Americans contributed to wide disparities in black and white incarceration rates. Nationally, black men were admitted to state prison on drug charges at a rate relative to population that was 13.4 times greater than that of white men. Black youths with no prior admissions were admitted to public correctional facilities for drug offenses at forty-eight times the rate of white youths. In some states the racial disparities were even worse: in seven states, blacks constituted between 80 and 90 percent of all drug offenders sent to prison and, in at least fifteen states, black men were sent to prison on drug charges at rates that were from twenty to fifty-seven times greater than those of white men. The concentration of drug law enforcement in low income minority neighborhoods and higher arrest rates for black drug offenders than white were primarily responsible for the remarkable racial disparities in drug offender incarceration.
some interesting data on [marijuana only convictions](http://www.mpp.org/arrests/fas61699.html)
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### Author:  [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2001, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-out-of-every-150-people-in-the-us-are-in-prison/65576/16 "2001-05-16T18:34:28Z")
The link provided in the OP would be simpler to follow if it made mention of [_incarceration_ rates](http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/incrt.htm) rather than throwing out numbers about increasing raw numbers of inmates (since our population is growing, it’s not surprising on the face of it that we have more prisoners).
Incarceration rates (i.e. the number of inmates behind bars per 100,000 population) have been rising since the mid-70s but [appear to be leveling off.](http://detnews.com/2001/nation/0103/26/a03-204232.htm)
What’s depressing to me is not that we are putting increasing numbers of criminals behind bars for longer periods, but the reaction of too many pundits. “Crime rates are dropping, but those rotten cops and prosecutors keep putting people in jail! Not fair!” Um, perhaps there’s a remote chance that there’s a connection between jailing crooks and seeing crime rates drop? Should we be incarcerating fewer criminals so that crime rates can increase again?
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### Author:  [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2001, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-out-of-every-150-people-in-the-us-are-in-prison/65576/17 "2001-05-16T18:51:31Z")
This has been discussed before. What gets you ins jail in America will pretty much get you in jail in Europe. The difference is a different culture. American society is much more violent. A lot of it has to do with family and social ties being stronger in other countries. There was a similar thread some time ago where this was discussed.
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### Author:  [@wring](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wring)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2001, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-out-of-every-150-people-in-the-us-are-in-prison/65576/18 "2001-05-16T21:18:50Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Jackmannii \*
> \*\*Incarceration rates (i.e. the number of inmates behind bars per 100,000 population) have been rising since the mid-70s but [appear to be leveling off.](http://detnews.com/2001/nation/0103/26/a03-204232.htm)
> (snip)Um, perhaps there’s a remote chance that there’s a connection between jailing crooks and seeing crime rates drop? Should we be incarcerating fewer criminals so that crime rates can increase again? \*\*
please see my remarks above for some ideas on why the linear thinking ‘crime rates’-‘incarceration rates’ have some problems. Remember causality is not determined solely because two things occur at similar times.
To demonstrate this concept, it’s useful to see a wider array of data for crime stats [such as the one here](http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/) You’ll note a few things, such as, there is no corresponding dip in crime rate that follows the rise in incarceration rates. In fact, you’ll see that the 1996 rate is roughly the same as the 1976 rate, and that there were a couple of peaks and valleys in between, not a steady rise then a corresponding steady fall, as would be suggested if there was a causality with the incarceration rates.
When you look at the overall picture that is demonstrated, you’ll see several cycles, rising and falling.
Studies on human behavior can rarely (IME) be concluded with a simple if-then kind of summation. Humans do things for a variety of reasons.
I’ve found it difficult to come up with wide ranging data to compare the US to other industrialized countries, but [this](http://ruljis.leidenuniv.nl/group/jfcr/www/icvs/Index.htm) does some comparisions (it seems to use data re: certain kinds of thefts, and the chart has industrialized nations, that have both urban and rural areas, comparing rates of victimization). In it, the US doesn’t seem out of whack with other similar countries. (you have to click on ‘data’, ‘tables with key statistics’ and ‘industrialised countries victimisation in one year’)
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### Author:  [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2001, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-out-of-every-150-people-in-the-us-are-in-prison/65576/19 "2001-05-17T00:25:59Z")
[QUOTE]
\*Originally posted by wring \*
\*\*
> [@](#):
>
> please see my remarks above for some ideas on why the linear thinking ‘crime rates’-‘incarceration rates’ have some problems. Remember causality is not determined solely because two things occur at similar times.\*\*
Yup, but I have not said that decreasing crime rates can be solely attributed to rising incarceration rates. I believe that it’s difficult to ignore a connection between more felons in jail and reduced crime when the trends continue year after year.\*\*
> [@](#):
>
> Humans do things for a variety of reasons.\*\*
It’s incontrovertible that when criminal humans are behind bars, their potential for doing harmful things is vastly reduced. Thankfully.
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### Author:  [@oldscratch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/oldscratch)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2001, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/1-out-of-every-150-people-in-the-us-are-in-prison/65576/20 "2001-05-17T00:35:10Z")
Don’t forget the link between allowing abortion and decreasing crime.
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