# In the USA, who creates more suffering, prisons or criminals? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 15, 2015, 8:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-usa-who-creates-more-suffering-prisons-or-criminals/731334 "2015-09-15T08:05:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Habeed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a587f6/32.png) [@Habeed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Habeed)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2015, 8:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-usa-who-creates-more-suffering-prisons-or-criminals/731334/1 "2015-09-15T08:05:45Z")
Criminals murder people rarely. (most murders happen as an escalation of conflicts between people who know each other, not as a result of a professional criminal). They steal stuff. Once in a extremely rare blue moon they will kidnap and torture someone. Prisons currently have .716% of all of the people in them, and 2.8% are being “supervised”. Once a person has been punished for their crime, they are permanently barred from most forms of gainful employment as nearly every job worth having conducts a criminal background check. That’s 8.6% of everybody, or 25% of blacks having a felony, or 40% of all white men, or 50% of all blacks having a “do not hire” stamp on them. So if you just do the math : most criminals are thieves. Victims of theft sometimes have insurance, and may have some modest difficulty in their life for a few weeks or months before they recover. An occasional rare person is murdered. The prison system steals decades of income for 8.6% of people, years of freedom for at least 2-3% of everyone, and it apparently plans to kill about [159,000 people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_imprisonment_in_the_United_States) by locking them in cages and subjecting them to torture and discomfort until they are dead from old age. “But those people all deserve it”. Maybe. Somehow the European countries [don’t believe](http://www.prisonstudies.org/highest-to-lowest/prison-population-total) a massive number of people “deserve it”. “But if we don’t “send a message” by locking people up for decades we will have more criminals”. [Evidence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate) doesn’t indicate that. I am beginning to suspect that institutions create more harm than individuals. This makes a kind of logical sense, an institution can commit harm on a vast, organized level. Individuals \*mostly \*commit crimes because the conditions (and those conditions are often generated by institutions) encourage them to do so. ---
**Author:** ![PSXer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/48db29/32.png) [@PSXer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PSXer)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2015, 8:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-usa-who-creates-more-suffering-prisons-or-criminals/731334/2 "2015-09-15T08:07:51Z")
Insurance companies are also victims of theft ---
**Author:** ![brovolone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a88e4f/32.png) [@brovolone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brovolone)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2015, 8:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-usa-who-creates-more-suffering-prisons-or-criminals/731334/3 "2015-09-15T08:58:45Z")
Criminals cause victims to suffer. Institutions cause _both_ criminals and victims to suffer _due_ to the actions of criminals. Hard to say. The incarceration rate between the UK and US is only a difference of .5% UK has under 70m citizens, whereas the US has clear over 300m. More people-- more problems. ---
**Author:** ![brovolone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a88e4f/32.png) [@brovolone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brovolone)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2015, 9:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-usa-who-creates-more-suffering-prisons-or-criminals/731334/4 "2015-09-15T09:04:40Z")
:dubious: mod can you delete this double post ---
**Author:** ![glee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b5a626/32.png) [@glee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glee)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2015, 9:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-usa-who-creates-more-suffering-prisons-or-criminals/731334/5 "2015-09-15T09:30:09Z")
> [@brovolone](#): > > The incarceration rate between the UK and US is only a difference of .5% Yes, if you subtract the rate it’s about .5%. But if you take the ratio (which is more logical), **the US locks up about 6 times as many people as the UK**. (From your cite: The US has about 2.2 million prisoners with a population of about 319 million. The UK has about 86,000 prisoners with a population of about 64 million. So the US has a prison population rate of about 0.69%, while the UK rate is 0.13%.) ---
**Author:** ![brovolone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a88e4f/32.png) [@brovolone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brovolone)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2015, 9:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-usa-who-creates-more-suffering-prisons-or-criminals/731334/6 "2015-09-15T09:37:37Z")
Correct, so let’s look at the crime rates between the two. ---
**Author:** ![up\_the\_junction](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/f1d935/32.png) [@up\_the\_junction](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/up_the_junction)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2015, 9:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-usa-who-creates-more-suffering-prisons-or-criminals/731334/7 "2015-09-15T09:42:29Z")
The issue in the USA is largely sentencing - the prison population is aging because of previous political policies. If you imprison someone for life or 50 years, that’s already 2 or 2.5 prison places in the UK. > [@glee](#): > > Yes, if you subtract the rate it’s about .5%. > But if you take the ratio (which is more logical), **the US locks up about 6 times as many people as the UK**. > > (From your cite: > > The US has about 2.2 million prisoners with a population of about 319 million. > The UK has about 86,000 prisoners with a population of about 64 million. > > So the US has a prison population rate of about 0.69%, while the UK rate is 0.13%.) Why choose the UK? Fwiw, last time I looked the UK was right at the top of European levels. ---
**Author:** ![gracer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8e7dd6/32.png) [@gracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gracer)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2015, 10:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-usa-who-creates-more-suffering-prisons-or-criminals/731334/8 "2015-09-15T10:07:48Z")
> [@PSXer](#): > > Insurance companies are also victims of theft Or they profit from theft. If there were no theft, they wouldn’t need to insure against it. In the end they’re making money + jobs from what we all put in every month, or they wouldn’t be doing it. No tears were shed for insurance companies during the reading of this thread. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2015, 10:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-usa-who-creates-more-suffering-prisons-or-criminals/731334/9 "2015-09-15T10:27:35Z")
> [@brovolone](#): > > Correct, so let’s look at the crime rates between the two. Are you sure you want to do that? The USA locks up far, far more people (as ratio of population) than does the UK and yet the crime stats do not suggest that the USA is a safer place to live. And, as others have pointed out, the UK is a relatively high crime/high incarceration country when compared to other European nations. [Have a look here](http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/United-Kingdom/United-States/Crime), it is a fair old jumble of stats and figures, not all of which will be robust I’m sure. ---
**Author:** ![Claverhouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/13edae/32.png) [@Claverhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Claverhouse)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2015, 10:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-usa-who-creates-more-suffering-prisons-or-criminals/731334/10 "2015-09-15T10:59:49Z")
Well now, Yanks honestly believe Britain is a bleak wasteland with grannies being battered for sport and knifings on a nightly regular basis, with criminals breaking into houses the minute you leave. All because of the Welfare State and for want of a gun. In their dreams one right-wing gun-nut could clean out and save a town in a day once the gloves were removed and the laws suspended. Don’t take that away from them. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2015, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-usa-who-creates-more-suffering-prisons-or-criminals/731334/11 "2015-09-15T12:13:41Z")
Let’s say I commit identity theft on the OP, empty his bank account and play hell with his credit rating by running up huge debt on his cards. Just a temporary inconvenience for him. I should be able to avoid incarceration if caught, even if I do the same thing to hundreds of other people, because prison bad. Makes sense to me! I guess I’m in the wrong profession. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2015, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-usa-who-creates-more-suffering-prisons-or-criminals/731334/12 "2015-09-15T12:16:56Z")
> [@Habeed](#): > > Prisons currently have .716% of all of the people in them, and 2.8% are being “supervised”. What do you mean by “supervised”, and where does this statistic come from? ---
**Author:** ![glee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b5a626/32.png) [@glee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glee)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2015, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-usa-who-creates-more-suffering-prisons-or-criminals/731334/13 "2015-09-15T13:23:43Z")
> [@brovolone](#): > > Correct, so let’s look at the crime rates between the two. The US murder rate is far higher than the UK: In 2012 US 4.7 (14,827 homicides) UK 1.0 (653 homicides) ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2015, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-usa-who-creates-more-suffering-prisons-or-criminals/731334/14 "2015-09-15T13:33:31Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > Let’s say I commit identity theft on the OP, empty his bank account and play hell with his credit rating by running up huge debt on his cards. Or pull a gun on him; or beat him up and take his wallet; or break into his house, tie up his wife and kids, and steal his stuff. There’s definitely room for improvement in the issues of whom we put in prison, for how long, and how we treat them while they’re in there and after they get out. But the OP seems to imply that murderers are the only people who are dangerous enough to society that they should be locked up. Instead of comparing suffering created by prisons vs. criminals, it makes more sense to compare suffering, especially undeserved suffering, created by prisons vs. what criminals _would_ create if they weren’t put in prison. ---
**Author:** ![up\_the\_junction](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/f1d935/32.png) [@up\_the\_junction](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/up_the_junction)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2015, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-usa-who-creates-more-suffering-prisons-or-criminals/731334/15 "2015-09-15T13:51:31Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > Let’s say I commit identity theft on the OP, empty his bank account and play hell with his credit rating by running up huge debt on his cards. > > Just a temporary inconvenience for him. I should be able to avoid incarceration if caught, even if I do the same thing to hundreds of other people, because prison bad. > > Makes sense to me! I guess I’m in the wrong profession. Yep, you need to get into banking: bigger rewards, conveniently not even a crime. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2015, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-usa-who-creates-more-suffering-prisons-or-criminals/731334/16 "2015-09-15T17:55:53Z")
> [@Habeed](#): > > The prison system steals decades of income for 8.6% of people, years of freedom for at least 2-3% of everyone, and it apparently plans to kill about [159,000 people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_imprisonment_in_the_United_States) by locking them in cages and subjecting them to torture and discomfort until they are dead from old age. We still do that? I was pretty sure BHO put a stop to it. Also, life imprisonment is not the same as death row. In the one, we politely wait for them to die, in the other, we take proactive steps to make it happen sooner rather than later. ---
**Author:** ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2015, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-usa-who-creates-more-suffering-prisons-or-criminals/731334/17 "2015-09-15T18:47:03Z")
> [@](#): > > Yep, you need to get into banking: bigger rewards, conveniently not even a crime. Don’t forget bulletproof. How many people went to jail for the last banking scandal? ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2015, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-usa-who-creates-more-suffering-prisons-or-criminals/731334/18 "2015-09-15T18:51:13Z")
> [@Habeed](#): > > I am beginning to suspect that institutions create more harm than individuals. This makes a kind of logical sense, an institution can commit harm on a vast, organized level. Individuals \*mostly \*commit crimes because the conditions (and those conditions are often generated by institutions) encourage them to do so. All of that said, the alternatives are no laws, incarcerating people for life, regardless of crime, or killing them. ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2015, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-usa-who-creates-more-suffering-prisons-or-criminals/731334/19 "2015-09-15T19:12:42Z")
I question any belief system that weighs equally the suffering of the innocent against the suffering of the criminal. ---
**Author:** ![IDtenT\_Error](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@IDtenT\_Error](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IDtenT_Error)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2015, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-usa-who-creates-more-suffering-prisons-or-criminals/731334/20 "2015-09-15T19:26:11Z")
> [@Claverhouse](#): > > Well now, Yanks honestly believe Britain is a bleak wasteland with grannies being battered for sport and knifings on a nightly regular basis, with criminals breaking into houses the minute you leave. Of course it is. I saw it in a documentary called “Clockwork something-or-other”. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-the-usa-who-creates-more-suffering-prisons-or-criminals/731334.md?page=2)