I have just read through this thread. I did not see one fact that disproves my assertion that more punishment leads to less crime. Nor have I seen any evidence that social reform and social welfare spending reduces the crime rate.
It’s easy to show that the argument Levitt makes in Freakonomics concerning abortion and crime is untrue. We simply check the statistics regarding teenage crime and find that children born in the five-year period after Roe v. Wade were vastly more likely to commit crime than those born in the five-year period before Roe v. Wade. Levitt is a fraud. (He’s made false claims in other areas as well.)
As for the issue of whether harsh prison sentences lead to a drop in crime, we again need only look at crime rates over time. During the late 70’s and early 80’s, punishments were drastically increased all over the country. What happened to crime rates after that? As you’ve already shown, crime skyrocketed during the 80’s and early 90’s. It peaked (not “peeked”) around '91 and then went down. The incarceration rate does not explain this. What explains this was an increase in police funding, new technologies, new theories of what causes crime, and new approaches to fighting crime, which were actually implemented in the early 90’s. This article is the best take on the subject that I’ve ever seen.
Can someone who is better with statistics than I am compare the incarceration rates by state listed here (at least for top and bottom 10) with the crime rates by state listed here(.pdf)? My cursory inspection shows no correlation at all between the highest incarceration rates and the lowest crime rates.
I see the decline in respect/ credibility as a function of the American Empire, which was established in 1960.
Basically, Kennedy decided that the USA would police the world, and maintain a huge standing military force. This would be paid for by the enormous trade surpluses that the USA (and enormous reserves. The US would be assisted by vassal states (the UK, S. Korea, Taiwan), and it was envisioned that this state of affairs would last forever. But now, 52 years later, there is no surplus-the USA is now the world’s largest debtor nation, and the peasants are balking at military service. The latest string of imperial wars have proven to be surprisingly unpopular, and the peasants are wondering what they get for their taxes
A cursory glance tells me that states with a higher crime rate, have a higher incarceration rate, and states with a lower crime rate, have a lower incarceration rate. (Duh!)
Scribbling some numbers down and rounding off in my head, it appears to me that in the top 10 “bad” states there’s about 20 people in jail per 100 crimes committed.
In the top 10 “good” states, there’s about 10 people in jail for every 100 crimes committed.
Of course, like I said, that’s just guesstimation. I didn’t plug the numbers into a calculator.
:dubious: What exactly is a third world population that the UK has less of than the US?
Just like Johnson signed the civil rights act and in the same decade there was a loss of faith in the government. Dark clouds cause rain so… I got it, it’s so obvious, darkies did it!
No it doesn’t. On the contrary; brutality breeds brutality.
Brown people.
It is remarkable that you can determine what I feel on a topic on which I have expressed no opinion. It seems that this sort of straw man is a particularly favored tactic of your, but is is still not persuasive.
That is silly. We have actual figures on actual crimes across the entire specturm of illegal activity. Those numbers are rported in both the U.S. and Canada. The numbers in both counries show a similar declining rate over the same period. Pulling one category out of the entire spectrum and pretending that that is the “best” way to evaluate the overall rates is nothing but grasping at straws to cover the fact that the real numbers disagree with your assertion.
Thank you for that testimony that it is a decline in the numbers of crime prone young males that has contributed to the decline in crimes. You might want to back off providing arguments for my position and against yours, however, if you want to hold on to your unsupported claim that higher incarceration has led to the drop in crime.
What is unsupportable about my claim? Why does anyone have difficulty understanding what when more criminals are put in prison longer fewer of them will have the opportunity to commit crimes?
More punishment = less crime.
It is just as simple as that.
Why is the homicide rate lower in Sweden than in Saudi Arabia? Why is the homicide rate higher in Pakistan than in the Bahamas, a country with a far higher number of incarcerated individuals? Why is Norway’s recidivism rate much lower than the United State’s?
But it isn’t that simple. That may be an article of faith among millions of Americans, but that doesn’t make it any more true than any other faith based belief.
I did not say it was unsupportable, only that you have failed miserably to support it.
You have put forth a claim that imprisoning more people leads to less crime. Further, you have insisted, over and over again, that that is the specific reason that crime has dropped in the U.S. You have ignored the fact that Canada and the U.S. have seen very similar trends in a drop in crime while Canada has not increased the rate at which it imprisons people in the same way that the U.S. has. Rather than trying to explain that difference, you have made odd accusations about what others “feel,” tried to change the topic, and otherwise avoided addressing the issue.
As to your simplistic, (not simple), claim that “more punishment = less crime,” you will need to provide evidence for that claim from different locations or different eras, otherwise it is nothing more than wishful thinking on your part.
I recall my old anthropology professor, who fought as a marine in the South Pacific in WWII and then was a hippie in the 1960s, putting the dividing line as WWII. He claimed the secrecy and counterespionage during that war set a precedent. Said that before the war, your average American trusted the government implicitly, but afterward began a slippery slopw.
In Sweden the homicide rate per 100,000 inhabitants is 0.99.
In Saudia Arabia the homicide rate per 100,000 inhabitants is 1.04.
I do not see much difference here.
In Pakistan the homicide rate per 100,000 inhabitants is 7.3.
In the Bahamas the homicide rate per 100,000 inhabitants is 36.
A much higher percentage of the Norwegian population is white than in the United States.
"In 2005, [murder] rates for blacks [in the United States] were more than 7 times higher than the rates for whites.
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/homicide/race.cfm
If you look at the list of murder rates of countries I posted you will see that countries that are predominantly white or Oriental nearly always have lower murder rates than countries that are predominantly black or Hispanic.
Violent street crimes are mainly committed by males between the age of 15 and 30. A violent street criminal born five years before Roe v. Wade would have been 15 in 1983. A violent street criminal born five years after Roe v. Wade would have been 15 in 1993. In 1983 the rate of violent crime per 100,000 inhabitants was 537.7. In 1993 it was 746.8.
In between was the crack epidemic. I am not saying that a rising prison population and a high rate of abortion are the only factors that influences crime rates. I am saying that they are important factors, and that they are factors over which we have more control than other factors.
Freakonomics has obviously eugenic implications. That is why some people strain to find fault in it.
Because the dates begin in 1981 and end in 2001 they do not show the tripling of the U.S. crime rate from 1960 to 1980. Nor do they show the continuing decline after 2001.
Most Americans have lost ground economically since the beginning of this century, so if poverty increases the crime rate we would expect an increase.
Fig 3 of Violent Offenses shows a significant decline in the US after 1991, a less significant decline in the UK, and a fairly flat rate in Canada.
Fig 5 of homicide rates shows a significant decline in the United States after 1991. Homicide is flat in the UK and Canada.
Fig 7 of robbery rates shows a significant decline in the United States after 1991, an increase in the UK, and a flat rate in Canada.
Fig 9 of aggravated assault again shows a decline in the U.S. after 1991, a higher rate in the UK, and a flat rate in Canada.
Fig 11 of burglary rates shows a continual decline in the U.S. after 1981, and higher rates in UK and Canada.
Fig 13 of Motor Theft again shows a decline in 1991 in the US, and a higher rate in the UK.
http://www.csc-scc.gc.ca/text/rsrch/briefs/b29/b29-eng.shtml#LinkTarget_562
Higher rates of burglary rates in Canada and the UK have been attributed to more gun ownership by home owners in the United States than in Canada and the UK. The standard argument against strict gun control laws is that law abiding people obey them while criminals do not. In order to evaluate this argument I would need to be able to compare gun ownership by criminals in Canada, the UK, and the US. I do not have that information.
The information in this essay is supportive of Freakonomics because it does show a significant decline in most crimes in the U.S. after 1991.
It is less supportive of my theses that a tripling of the prison population contributed to a decline in the crime rate after 1980. However, the data I use to show fluctuations in the crime rate begin in 1960 and end in 2010.
During the 1960s the prison population in the United States declined. Poverty declined because of a broadly based economic expansion and an expansion of the welfare system. The crime rate doubled. One can argue, and I agree, that part of the decline was caused by an increase in the youth population. One cannot argue that the decline in poverty and the civil rights legislation reduced the crime rate.
The difference is in the implementation of the punishment. There is much more punishment in Saudi Arabia, including administering the death penalty for adultery. There is not much less crime. Does that refute your hypothesis? Or will you modify it to “more punishment for black people, less crime”?
I have never said that the incarceration rate is the only factor influencing the crime rate. It is an important factor, and one that we have quite a bit of control over.
No.
Russia has the largest white population in the world, and the largest population of Northern European white folks in the world.
Russians have an astronomically high murder rate, as high as the black American murder rate. The major cities of Russia are rife with violent crime. Huge areas of St Petersburg, Vladivostok, etc are no go areas where tourists and foreign businessmen are advised to avoid.
Is Russia really the outlier here with regard to Europeans, or are the exceptions the prosperous, stable countries of Western Europe?
Remember, if you use environment to explain the crime problem in Russia, then you have to use it everywhere. If not environment, then what? Why isn’t Russia as stable and prosperous as China? Why are you much more likely to be robbed, raped, or murdered in Moscow than you are in Shanghai?
After reading this whole thread, I can’t believe that no-one has pointed out that New Deal Democrat is talking about PER CAPITA incarceration rates and the actual population is therefore irrelevant.
What’s the mantra here–“Fighting Ignorance” or “Allowing Ignorance if it Suits My Ideology?”