US Incarceration Rates

Great Debates
41

[QUOTE=scotandrsn]
Your original link seems to talk mainly about homicide rates, whereas Levitt talks about violent crime of all stripes, and addresses the homicide spike as a result of the crack epidemic of the 80s and 90s, which Sailer doesn’t respond to anywhere that I can see.
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Here is a link to the New York crime statistics. They do not correspond to argument that Levitt makes.

[QUOTE=scotandrsn]
Also, where he does address overall violent crime, Sailer only addresses national statistics, whereas Levitt correctly adjusts for results based on
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How were you planing on ending this sentence? National statistics should still roughly reflect the overall decline since abortion legalization was national.

[QUOTE=scotandrsn]
Where Sailer quotes the WSJ article, he conveniently leaves out the part where the referee of Levitt’s 2001 paper points out that the Foote paper only challenges one of several points made in the original, and that while the mistakes Foote points out are valid, the results stand.
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Foote’s and Sailer are making to different arguments. I don’t think Levitt’s work is bad, just that the conclusions he’s drawn are faulty. Nothing he’s done has demonstrated a causal relationship between abortion and crime. additionally, many people falsely present reduce Levitt’s argument that “abortion caused crime drop in the 90’s” when he himself doesn’t make that claim outright.

[QUOTE=scotandrsn]
Your first link in my quoted post above is hopelessly confused mentally, challenging Leavitt’s findings that increased policing had a minimal effect on crime compared to other factors by presenting a set of facts showing the effects of policing are all over the map.
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Which I imagine he does to show that it’s not a good basis for determining anything.

[QUOTE=scotandrsn]
You’ve made your point the there are challenges to Levitt’s findings. Rather than continue the hijack why don’t you read these PDFs, which are bound to have less spun information than a bunch of blogs and newspaper columns:
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You mean links written by the guy who’s being challenged? You think that doesn’t have spin? He, more than anyone, has a lot to lose if he is proved wrong. I’ve read the initial study and his book, and I’m not convinced he’s made his case.

42

[QUOTE=Clothahump]
Another conclusion is that our penalties are not strong enough to be effective deterrants, because we are too interested in “correction” rather than “penal” systems.
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WTF? That kind of thinking on penology went out with the Carter Administration. Since the Reagan Revolution, practically all American public discourse on how to deal with criminals has been couched in moral terms, not psychological or sociological or behavioral.

43

[QUOTE=Measure for Measure]

Heck, what’s your cite that suggests that ** plea bargaining (which occurs in all countries) ** is more generous for murder in the UK, Canada, Japan etc.?
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Plea bargaining isn’t universal. It doesn’t exist in France. There’s no guilty/not guilty plea, nor deals with the prosecution.

I wouldn’t know if it exists in other countries mentionned like Germany or Japan.

44

[QUOTE=Least Original User Name Ever]
Yes, actually they are. Less of their populace is behind bars and their crime rate is also rather low.
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Could it be related to a closer control of the population, either by the authorities, or even by neighbors if Cuba is more community-oriented? Could it be related to a larger rural population, since crime rates are generally significantly lower in rural areas than in urban areas?

45

[QUOTE=clairobscur]
Plea bargaining isn’t universal. It doesn’t exist in France. There’s no guilty/not guilty plea, nor deals with the prosecution.

I wouldn’t know if it exists in other countries mentionned like Germany or Japan.
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Blink.

Didn’t know that. (Thanks).

If that’s the case, and murder rates are highly affected by judicial policy, then France should have a higher measured homicide rate, for a given level of mayhem.

At any rate, I think we can say that plea bargaining doesn’t explain most of the variation in homicide rates, as France has both zero plea bargaining and a much lower homicide rate than the US (17 vs 43 per million).

According to Wikipedia, France has limited forms of plea bargaining for minor crimes who prison sentences are less than 1 year. Generally, Wikipedia says that countries governed by civil code have little plea bargaining. So, following Blake, perhaps the US’s homicide rate reflects fewer cases of deliberate murder than other countries: the differences in “true” murder rates (between the US and countries not operating under common law) is actually larger. Plea bargain - Wikipedia

46

[QUOTE=Measure for Measure]
According to Wikipedia, France has limited forms of plea bargaining for minor crimes who prison sentences are less than 1 year.
[/QUOTE]

Yes. I didn’t mention it because it seemed an irrelevant detail in a thread about violent crimes. Furthermore, it has been introduced only last year, so the consequences, if any, wouldn’t yet appear in statistical figures.

47

ISTM that regardless of the cause (excepting statistical hocus pocus, which I have not seen convincingly advocated in this thread) the US having an incarceration that matches or exceeds totalitarian dictatorships is indicative that we are Really Fucked Up. I assume that we all agree on that point and are just arguing about causes?

48

[QUOTE=brickbacon]
How were you planing on ending this sentence? National statistics should still roughly reflect the overall decline since abortion legalization was national.
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Thank you for catching my error. The sentence should have concluded:

…whereas Levitt correctly adjusts for results based on the non-uniform rates of increase of availability of abortion services per state both prior to and subsequent to the Roe v. Wade decision.

[QUOTE=brickbacon]
You mean links written by the guy who’s being challenged? You think that doesn’t have spin? He, more than anyone, has a lot to lose if he is proved wrong. I’ve read the initial study and his book, and I’m not convinced he’s made his case.
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I am suggestin that data in a peer-reviewed setting is less likely to have spin than the kinds of sources you provided.

The original paper was published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics. We know it was peer-reviewed because the WSJ article quotes from one of the paper’s referees.

Both Joyce’s paper and Donahue and Levitt’s response were published in the Journal of Human Resources, which liststhis policy on their website:

An academic would have to tell you if that qualifies as peer review, but it all comes out in the wash since any criticism of lack of academic rigor leveled at one paper based on its inclusion under JHR’s criteria would have to be levelled at both of them.

I will grant that my last two links are not referreed, but again, that places them at the same level of rigor, so it all evens out.

I am not responding to your other points here, because I regard the discussion of Levitt a hijack to the thread, and because I have enough problems with Levitt on other fronts that I don’t feel particularly compelled to defend him further. All that is for other threads.

I have merely pointed out where I thought his critics’ arguments as you have presented them have fallen short, and provided links to analyses of the data that have a far greater liikelihood of containing data and analyses that rise beyond the level of rigor provided by blogs, books, magazine articles, etc.

49

Heh. I have an article in front of me by Levitt entitled, “Understanding Why Crime Fell in the 1990s: Four Factors that Explain the Decline and Six that Do Not”.

Four Factors Explaining the Decline

  1. Increase in the prison population
  2. Legalized Abortion
  3. Increases in the number of police
  4. Decline of crack.

With #1 being roughly the most important and #4 being the least.

Here are the SIx Factors that Played Little or No Role in the Crime Decline
In no particular order:
[ul]
[li]Changing Demographics[/li][li]Better Policing Strategies[/li][li]Gun Control Laws[/li][li]Increase Use of Capital Punishment[/li][li]Laws Allowing Carrying of Concealed Weapons[/li][/ul]
J of Ec Perspectives, Winter 2004, see esp. p 183-184 & Table 5