Land of the Free? So why do you lock up so many of your citizens?

Great Debates
21

december wonders, “*Truthfully, I don’t know what the cause is. *”

While I applaud your display of modesty, I think we know the causes. (1) Crime levels are higher in the US.
(2) For equivalent crimes, US citizens are jailed longer.
and (interestingly)
(3) there appears to be a US trend towards ex-cons violating their parole and being sent back to the slammer.

Of course, december was probably wondering about underlying causes, as opposed to immediate ones. Still, the above facts are a start.

**Jackmannii/b]: You simply don’t believe in the Economist’s factual accuracy. Fine. But you have not shown any sort of factual innaccuracy on their part. Or bias, IMHO. With all due respect, it seems to me that you jumped to conclusions based on a couple of paragraphs that I reproduced.

BTW: The Economist, in Europe, is considered to be a conservative newspaper. If you believe it to be ultra-liberal by US standards, however, I won’t disagree with you. After all, the US is #1 in incarceration, clear evidence of a conservative approach to public safety.

As for the Toronto piece, I’ll concede for the purposes of this thread that they are a bunch of commie pinkos who believe that the fact that the US incarcerates more of its citizens than Russia, China or any other country is sufficiently newsworthy to deserve a brief page 9 article. I know, such brevity and bias: it’s an outrage.

The question is, why is the US citizenry largely disinterested in cost-effective crime prevention? From the Economist:

Admittedly, the article also notes that there are a few straws in the wind that point towards greater sympathy for a crime policy based on cost effectiveness and data.

DDG: *…bear in mind that you can prove anything with statistics that you want to. * No, you can argue anything you want to with statistics. A decent analyst (read: somebody who understands proportions at a 10th grade level), can see through many statistical prevarications without too much difficulty.

Excellent questions miclin.

22

Well, what if it just so happens that losing the right to vote is part of the sentence of a felony? Why should they ever get it back?

23

Good God, I’m amused by all the whining in this thread about “bias”! I mean give me a break. The reason why it is actually good for us Americans to be force-fed a bit of news on the U.S. as filtered through the eyes of other nations is so we can see ourselves as others see us rather than only seeing ourselves through our own distorted views! This is an educational opportunity for all you folks who clearly seem to have gotten too little exposure to the U.S. through foreign points of view.

For heaven’s sake, the Globe and Mail isn’t obligated to present things in a “balanced” way in the sense of giving equal time to the reactionary elements in the U.S. Do you think the New York Times reported events in Afghanistan giving equal time to the views of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in regards to the proper role of women in society, etc., etc?

In particular, Duck Duck Goose, the Globe and Mail was clear in context that it was quoting from “civil liberties groups that believe U.S. prisons have become a weapon against the poor, and especially against blacks.” So, if you had just read what they wrote, you could have saved yourself the time of doing your detective work.

Anthracite, I admit that The Globe and Mail article erred in implying that all felons lose the right to vote. However, for all your horror, it is actually not at all clear that their 4 million number is incorrect. It may be that the 4 million figure is the correct number who have lost their right to vote and the actual number of ex-felons is higher…In which case The Globe and Mail’s mistake is a fairly minor one in not explaining their statistic quite right. If the 4 million is actually the number of ex-felons and most of them can in fact vote then I would agree that it is a major error and warrants a correction.

Honestly, most of the rest of your post strikes as nitpicking. What, you want them to define what “small” means for each different kind of drug? I mean, this article was providing an overview…It wasn’t a thesis on “Incarceration rates in the U.S. and its relationship to drug laws as illustrated by New York’s Rockefeller Laws”!

And, december, your cute little counter-thesis about liberals causing the high crime rate doesn’t really fit the data very well given the relative liberalness of the U.S. and other Western nations.

24

It may very well be fair to say that the war on drugs leads to such a high percentage of the population being jailed. Keep in mind that there are more than a few countries that just execute convicted drug offenders.

Corrections is a growth industry. The money spent on it is huge, like it is for drugs. The money keeps people moving into the drug trade, and it serves to keep a steady stream of prisoners marching into and out of jail.
Here are some interesting links:

Corrections.com

Prisons.com

T-NETIX…is the nation’s largest provider of corrections industry related telecommunications services.

Currently an estimated $30-40 billion is spent on adult corrections (healthcare)

American RadioWorks - Corrections Inc. (a three part series)

Like so many things in our society… follow the money.

25

Well, let’s turn this around. Find me a crime expert, just one, who believes that the rate is showing signs of reversing. Then I might agree with you that such a blanket statement was not justifiable.

26

Right, but nevertheless the whole article was slanted in that it gave the overwhelming impression that there’s something wrong with the U.S.–“why are so many of its citizens in jail, in comparison to Canada?”

BTW, I ran this question past the Better Half, and he said, “That’s because there’s nothing worth stealing in Canada–they all come down here to do it.” :smiley:

And, no detective work is ever “wasted”. :wink:

27

In a country with harsh Mandatory Minimum Sentences for drug offenders, and “Asset Forfeiture” laws which say that the state can take your car if your engage in ONE act of sex with a prostitute in it, and which locks up American citizens accused of being terrorists indefinitely without trials by calling them “Enemy Combatants”, I don’t think we’re really as free as we brag that we are.

Sometimes I’m ashamed of being a citizen of this country. We’re so arrogant that it disgusts me sometimes.

28

Indeed. Haven’t we had this conversation before? All that’s missing now is what’s-his-name to come in and say I’m now somehow “attacking” your credibility as a scientist, while at the same time again snidely implying that I am “disreputable”…but I’m sure he’ll be showing up here soon… :rolleyes:

It is indeed fortunate that I never said I was “horrified”, nor that the 4 million number was incorrect then.

I want journalists to maintain some level of unbiased truthfulness and honesty if they are going to be presenting information to the mass public. That sentence in the article was clearly intended to convey an impression that people are being thrown in prison willy-nilly as convicted felons over trifling amounts of drugs.

The reason that the “bias” is important with respect to this article is that the article was used as the sole source for the OP of the thread. Had it been one of many sources, presenting a range of views and opinions - even if they all came to the same conclusion, there would not have been a credibility problem that would have caused me to “nitpick”.

When one is basing an argument or statement largely on a sole source, that sole source must bear up under greater scrutiny.

These are not very strict requirements. There should at least be a good-faith attempt to try to not be biased, unless it is an OP-Ed piece, and at least try to find other sources, and at least try to make some citations.

I’m sorry, but it doesn’t work that way. If I question a fact or a statement which is made, I am not required to absolutely disprove the fact or statement - the person making it should be able to say how they arrived at the fact or statement they are making. In this case, the reporter is required to prove his point to me before I take him at his word. And if “crime experts” (a completely undefined class of person in the context of the article) are so universal in their opinions in support of the assertions made, then why could not even one single one be referenced? Not even one?

29

Anyway, thanks for the clarification, Anthracite:

If you were saying that this page 9 piece was slanted leftwards and it’s just not fair, :pout:, I’d say you were whining.* Why? Because it’s a short slapped-together piece about the US becoming #1 in imprisoning felons. A piece that (I suspect) was inspired by the longer article in The Economist.

Anthracite said:
"The reason that the “bias” is important with respect to this article is that the article was used as the sole source for the OP of the thread. Had it been one of many sources, presenting a range of views and opinions - even if they all came to the same conclusion, there would not have been a credibility problem that would have caused me to “nitpick”. "

You suspect that the article may be leaving things out, given its superficial treatment. Fair enough. I’ll try to keep that in mind next time I start a thread.

Still, the question remains, “Why is the US numero uno in jailing its citizens?”. Why is over 1% of the US population in jail, on probation or on parole?" Or maybe the question is, “Is this a bad thing?”, depending upon your political persuasion.

*Systemic bias documented across many articles in that paper might be another matter.

30

It is true that an enormous number of the persons in prisons are in there for drug-related offenses. This seems very excessive to me.

Even as a hard-core conservative, I feel that drug offenses are excessively criminalized, and I really feel that there should be decriminalization of several “lower risk” drugs, but only if this is coupled with strict and sweeping tort reform, at the Constitutional level. Somehow, I don’t see people from the other side of the fence supporting that…

But as far as violent criminals - I really don’t give a shit if 50% of the population is behind bars - if they commit violent crimes, then they should do the time. Why would we allow murders and rapists to walk free, or receive only a few months punishment, just so we can say we are not jailing that many people? Yeah, if 50% of the populace is behind bars, that should be a clear wakeup call that society is not working. But it need not be “bad” in and of itself.

I also know that far too many people are not in jail. The little shit who stuck a handgun in my ribs and tried to rob me 6 years ago was sentenced to 25 years (he committed several other crimes, in case you were wondering about the long sentence), and got out in 18 months. And the two people who brutalized me decades ago never saw the inside of a jail cell.

Which will soon lead to many other debates, so I will stop here.

On the subject of bias again - note what DDG says about comparing stats from Canada from a different year than the rest of the countries. If that is not blatantly and purposefully done, and an example of criminally sloppy journalism, then I really don’t know what else to say.

31

I jumped on the Economist, prematurely as it turned out, because I assumed that you were reproducing its reporting fairly and completely, which you weren’t. When you added the additional excerpt, the piece as a whole became more reasonable. I did not say that I don’t believe in the paper’s factual accuracy, just that I would like to see a cite for that $10 figure regarding what prisoners are supposedly given on their release.

In answer to micilin:

“And what exactly does jackmannii mean when he implies that higher rates of immigration/increased social heterogeneity lead to higher crime rates?”

It would be interesting to see what happened to European crime rates if those nations accepted poor immigrants as freely as we do. At least, the leaders of several European nations (Italy, England etc.) seem to have major concerns about “unchecked” immigration and the strain on employment and crime. I think there’s room for pride in American inclusiveness; European critics of “rampant American crime and incarceration” might want to think how open their societies are in relation to the U.S. and what influence that might have on their crime statistics.

Wasn’t “Good God, I’m amused” the title of a James Brown song? :smiley:

32

**

DDG, that was the point of the article. The article was a story about how it’s possible there IS something wrong with the United States’s justice system. Good journalism sometimes involved asking tough, controversial questions. If you think it’s unfair, answer the question and show why its implications are wrong. Anthracite, if you’re bothered by this being the sole source, let me just ask the question myself, without citing the Globe and Mail; Why are so many Americans put in prison?

The OP, meanwhile, was asking the same question. I think we can agree that the incarceration rate in the U.S. IS extraordinarily high, higher than almost any other industrialized country. That’s not just something we all learned reading the Globe and Mail article; it’s a commonly understood fact. Like it or not, the question remains; why is that, and is it a problem? It certainly costs a ton of money. Let’s not nitpick one newspaper article.

Anthracite:

Nobody with a working brain disputes that murderers should go to prison, but most first world countries have laws against murder, and nobody puts as many citizens in jail as the U.S. While the U.S. has a higher murder rate than Canada or pretty much any other rich country, I can’t see how that accounts for the difference in incarceration rate. There aren’t THAT many murders, and I don’t think the incidence of other serious violent crimes can account for it.

And if it does, why is the U.S. so much more prone to violent crime than anyone else? Like it or not, an amazing number of people are sent to prison. There are lots of reasons this could be happening, at various stages of the process:

  1. It may be that there are sociological factors in the United States that cause Americans to commit a great many more serious crimes than the citizens of other nations.
  2. It may be that American penal code deals out harsher sentences for equivalent crimes.
  3. It may be that the American law enforcement system is more effective at finding and imprisoning criminals.
  4. It may be that behaviour is criminalized in the U.S. that is not criminalized elsewhere.
  5. It may be that the U.S. justice system is more likely to arrive at guilty verdicts.

So what is it, and why? The prevailing opinion seems to be the drug war, but maybe that’s a simplistic response.

Using the same years would not have changed the central point of the story one iota - that the U.S. incarceration rate is very high. The Canadian rate wasn’t going to quadruple in one year. If that’s the best data they had handy it does not strike me as carrying any chance at all of being so inaccurate as to affect the thrust of the article.

33

The causes are probably very complex but I would definitely say that a high crime rate and a high incarceration rate are to be seen as failures of a society.

U.S. correctional population at record high

[quote]
The adult U.S. correctional population reached a record high at the end of 2001, with 3.1 percent of the nation’s adult population incarcerated or under community supervision, federal statistics show.

34

Good, point. However, I could make my preferred thesis fit the data. Note that

– US crime rates increased dramatically since liberal programs began to take hold 1950’s.

– European crime rates are now sky-rocketing.

However, the trouble with my analysis, as well as jshore’s, is that that so many other factors affect the crime rate more than liberal or conservative policies do. So, it’s almost impossible to figure out what amount of change or difference in crime rate is due to these items. Similars problem exists in trying to measure the impact of the death penalty or gun control.

35

Be careful when you make comparisons. Crime in the UK certainly is “skyrocketing” by their standards but it is a tiny fraction of what it is in the US. The UK has the highest European per capita prison population with 65,000 for a population of 60 million which is 0.108 % Compare that with US numbers and the difference is staggering.

36

Huh? I know the U.S. – at both the State and Federal levels – has asset forfeiture laws associated with drug-related crimes, but where in the U.S. can your property be seized and forfeited in response to prostitution?!

37

However, the trouble with my analysis, as well as jshore’s, is that that so many other factors affect the crime rate more than liberal or conservative policies do. So, it’s almost impossible to figure out what amount of change or difference in crime rate is due to these items. Similars problem exists in trying to measure the impact of the death penalty or gun control.

That’s why the professionals use (1) critical thinking and (2) multivariate statistical analysis.

38

Right, but ethical professionals know the limitations of their methods. Multivariate statistical analysis is based on assumptions of normality and independence that probably do not apply to one’s actual system under study, and which could not be verified in any case. They can be assumed, using critical thinking, as flowbark says, but the model can never be that reliable. As a result, small differences are pretty darn difficult to tease out of the data with any certainty.

Particularly when one wants to deduce that there is causal relationship, not just an association, one must be able to identify pretty big differences.

39

Right, but ethical professionals know the limitations of their methods. Multivariate statistical analysis is based on assumptions of normality and independence that probably do not apply to the actual system under study, and which could not be verified in any case. They can be assumed, using critical thinking, as flowbark says, but the model can never be more than a rough approximation. As a result, small differences are pretty darn difficult to tease out of the data with any confidence.

When one wants to deduce that there is causal relationship, not just an association, the differences must be quite large.

But, by all means let your kids watch Sesame Street. We did, and they learned to read easily.

40

One of the major, if not THE major factor is the stupid “War on Drugs”. Which I think is a serious blight on America, and hopefully one day long from now this period will be looked upon like we look at prohibition today - a time when paranoia and overblown fears of social decay caused an entire nation to go slightly nuts on that one subject.

Have a look at this data, from the Drug Policy Alliance. Among the interesting findings:

[list]
[li] In 1980, drug law violators made up 25.1% of the prison population. By 1995, that had climbed to 61.3%[/li]
[li]In June, 1995, drug law violators constituted approximately 25%, or 388,000, of adults serving time. [/li]
[li]16.6% of federal prisoners in 1994 were non-violent drug law violators with no criminal history; an additional 4.6% had minimal criminal history. [/li]
[li]An estimated 220,000 drug law violators were in state prisons mid-year, 1995, a 1070% increase from 19,000 in 1980. [/li]
The situation has gotten worse since this data was collected.

Frankly, this is disgusting. Hundreds of thousands of people are in jail who have never hurt a soul. Non-violent, many with no criminal records. I consider this to be a human rights violation.

Now add in the amount of violent crime that is a direct result of the war on drugs. Higher drug prices have made the illegal drug trade more profitable, leading to gang wars and inner city violence. Drug addicts resort to crime to support their habits.

Then there are the secondary effects. Prison is a poisonous atmosphere. Taking a casual drug user who is an otherwise good citizen and throwing him into a prison with a hardcore population, and then releasing him with no job and a criminal record that makes it difficult to find one, is a surefire prescription for turning citizens into criminals. The high incarceration rate of black inner city males is another reason why there are so many single black mothers - a situation which is also a breeding ground for more crime.

Mandatory sentencing and harsh minimum sentencing guidelines for first offenders make the situation worse.

If you look at what is different between the U.S. and most of the other western nations that have much lower rates of incarceration, one factor leaps out at you: The War on Drugs. Oppose it. Both on practical and moral grounds. It doesn’t work, it costs a fortune, it is against the principles of a free society.