This is a follow on to the prison population question/column.
Do more convicts = less crime?
Rates of crimes following enactment of “Three Strikes” laws seem to indicate so, especially in California.
The theory there seems to be along Pareto type lines; that is, that 20% of the criminals (or less) cause(d) 80% (or more) of the crime, and that by locking up the continued “bad actors” as defined by repeat offenses, those committing the bulk of the criminal offenses would be unable to do so. S
ince the enactment of the 3 strikes law in CA, crime rates seem to have taken a sharp dive while (as you’d expect) prison populations went up.
But of course, simply filling the jails with just anyone won’t make crime go down. I don’t think we’ll ever know if the terrorization of the population at large in Stalin’s USSR via the arbitrary arrests and gulags had a positive effect on general crime rates.
So maybe: more “hardened” convicts in prison = less crime.