We are frequently told that America should be ashamed of having sent so many people to prison. We are compared unfavorably to most of Europe. But these complaints rarely ask what benefits flow from prison.
The best scholars have estimated that between 25 and 30 percent of the recent decline in crime rates is the result of imprisonment. A comparison with England is helpful. At one time it imprisoned a higher fraction of offenders than did the US, but in the 1980s it changed by imprisoning fewer people. As a result (I think), the British crime rate soared while ours fell.
Between 1980 and 1985 the American prison population increased by more than half and between 1985 and 1990 it again increased by half. But from 1987 to 1992, the British prison population dropped by about five thousand inmates despite a sharp rise in the crime rate.
These different responses did not happen by accident. Americans, voting for district attorneys, mayors, and governors, chose people who would take crime seriously. In England hardly any of these offices are filled by local election; instead, the Parliament and the Home Office decide on crime policies.
Those decisions included a bill that urged judges not to send offenders to prison unless the crime was very serious, and in determining seriousness the judges were asked to ignore the prior record of the offenders.
In short, American policies were driven by public opinion while British ones were shaped by elite preferences. As a result, victim surveys show that by the late 1990s the British robbery rate was one-quarter higher and the burglary and assault rates twice as high as those in this country.
This raises the interesting question of why elite views should be so different from popular ones. Some possible explanations: Elites can more easily protect themselves from criminal attacks; elites tend to have a therapeutic rather than punitive view of crime; elites in parliamentary regimes are protected against sharp swings in public moods.
There are a lot of criticisms one can make of prisons, but sending offenders there, provided it is done correctly and without abuse, is an eminently democratic strategy: We deprive guilty people of liberty to make innocent people safer.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Can I Be a Meaningful Blogger?
- Drug offenders in prison:
- Deterring crime:
- What Do We Get From Prison?
- James Q. Wilson Guest-Blogging:
You're also a little breezy with the caveat "provided it is done correctly and without abuse" -- while I'm generally a tough-on-crime type, those are certainly more than marginal concerns in the US criminal justice system today. Will you be posting more on that topic in coming days? Thanks, and keep it coming!
I would love a citation.
In addition to stupid gun laws, the Brit elites have made assaultive crime an extremely low-risk enterprise.
No getting shot.
No getting punched.
No getting smacked with a cricket bad the homeowner has in his bedroom.
No jail time.
And, not having a job, you don't lose it. Not having any money that anybody can identify, you don't lose that. As opposed to the vic who can get jail time, can be fined, can spend time and money on defense.
It's not just jail. It's the entire attitude.
Nor does the fact that there are more people in prison because of popular vote legitimize the practice as a good idea. Lots of things happen by/as a result of a popular vote that are probably not the best idea long-term, e.g., a combination of low taxes and high spending produces massive deficits that ultimately weaken the economy and the dollar as deficits add up. Elite economists may be opposed to such a combination, but at least it is driven by public opinion!
Maybe imprisonment for marijuana possession is causing a drop in armed robbery rates but that seems a little questionable.
—Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), Chair, Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Corrections and Rehabilitation
The same tactic is often employed by people trying to defend the US healthcare system againts the single-payer alternative. Simply take the British NHS, pretty much the worst possible way of implenting a single payer system, as comparison and conclude that the US system rocks. And don't ever mention France or Sweden.
Lots of other explanations could also bridge the gap.
For example, there could have been a greater focus on rehabilitation in the UK that led to less recidivism in the UK (was there?).
Or there could have been other causes for less crime in the US that coincided with greater imprisonment. I recall that the authors of Freakonomics claimed that legalized abortion post-1973 may have been responsible for less crime once the aborted children would have reached the prime age for law-breaking (roughly post-1990).
Also I wonder whether "crime" is defined consistently in this analysis - both between the US and the UK and across the relevant time periods. Does the UK have similar laws re drug possession? More than a few prisoners in the US are imprisoned on non-violent drug-related crimes.
The comparison with the British experience seems totally specious. The culture is different; the population's attitudes toward locking people away for long sentences is different (including the attitude toward capital punishment); the kinds of crimes that get people locked away are different.
And as others have pointed out, correlation even if accurate is not causation.
I fail to see how locking up those who don't violate anyone else's rights to life, liberty, or property (see: drug crimes, prostitution, etc) makes innocent people safer. But maybe that's just me.
Only if releasing them would cost us less than $25K/prisoner-year, which has not been demonstrated.
don't ever mention France or Sweden.
Can someone point me to an English-language source on the greatness of these systems?
Just one of the reasons why the founding fathers were a little suspicious of pure democracy. 51% of the people can put the other 49% in jail.
What are the rates for reduction in violent crime, in property crime and in nonviolent drug crime? I've read that a fairly large percentage of those in jail or prison--I don't remember what it is precisely--is there for nonviolent drug offenses. Does putting people away for nonviolent drug offenses reduce the rate of violent crime or the rate of property crime? If not, perhaps the cost of incarcerating them is not worthwhile.
Taxes pay for prisons; the costs of not locking up offenders are borne not by government but by the victims. Why shouldn't the victims bear the costs? I'm not the one attacked, why should I bear the cost?
Would it be possible for you to address and provide some statistics on this issue? It would be most helpful. I recall in looking for some statistics from DOJ on the subject that one problem I had was finding a definition or description of "most serious offense." Most stats that need to assign a single offense to each inmate assign the "most serious offense," but what does that mean in practice? From my own experience as a prosecutor, where an offender had committed both a violent offense and a drug offense, it was sometimes the case that the drug offense had a potentially greater penalty or a mandatory minimum, so that if "most serious offense" is categorized based on largest potential sentence, the drug charge would be the "most serious," even though in terms of human experience, we would call the violent crime more serious.
A little patience is in order. Having read some of Wilson's work, the analysis is sure to follow shortly.
Those who single out the "nonviolent" drug offenders who make up a significant portion of our prison/jail population make a good point, but again, let's not ignore the basic points of specific deterrence (a locked-up individual is unlikely to reoffend while he's locked up) and general deterrence (nothing focuses the attention of the would-be offender more than the threat of being caught and locked up for a long time).
Amazing that these basic points of logic are often ignored, as in the classic NY Times formulation: "crime rates fall, but prison populations continue at an all-time high ..."
We don't charge victims for the costs of incarceration because incarcerating or otherwise punishing those who break the law is one of the few truly legitimate functions of government. If you want to do away with that government function, then you've got to allow me and my family to protect ourselves in any way we can, with guns, private vengeance, you name it.
Beyond that, YOU do benefit from locking up criminals; the fact that the mugger was locked up yesterday may be the reason you were not mugged today.
P.S. From the way look at things, I would say that YOU are a member of the "elite."
Now that doesn't work with regard to the drug trade, as the folks in the trenches will tell you that each time you lock one up another just steps in to fill his shoes. Maybe there's some point at which they lose so much by attrition that the whole thing crumbles, like Al Qaeda has, but that point never seems to get within reach.
But when it comes to, say, burglary, locking up repeat offenders for years works great. Not for the burglar, obviously, but great for us.
Now I am sensitive to cost/benefit anaylses. If prisons cost too much to operate, I suggest we take perks away from the inmates, and perhaps use many of them as manual laborers to recoup the costs of their incarceration.
Sounds good as long as the death penalty is on the table.
correct. while i agree with the goals of those who think mj etc. should be legalized (or at least decrim'd) and more of a harm reduction vs. punitive approach be taken with drug USERS, the amount of propaganda and stuff coming from their ilk as to people being jailed (let alone imprisoned) for possessory offenses is WAY WAY overblown.
the way the stats are munged is that people who make this (false) claim will reference joe convict who was incarcertated for X years after being convicted of (for example) Possession.
what they fail to state is that this "possession" offense was a plea bargain down from a sales offense after the guy was caught selling and in possession of large quantities, and that the guy was also convicted of possession of stolen property, and has many many prior felony convictions. that would be an example.
it IS difficult to work your way into prison for possession, and not so easy even for sale, or possession with intent to sell . of course there are exceptions, but as somebody who has investigated over 300 felony and misdemeanor drug crimes in three different states, personally bought illegal drugs over 150 times while undercover, and followed hundreds of cases through the court systems - i know this is fact.
Wait a second here. Are you telling us that the prison population is England and Wales has gone up significantly, but the overall prison population of the UK is down?
It sounds to me like a certain other member of the UK is letting their criminals get off Scot-free.
I recall reading an interesting theory that high crime rates correlate with lead based paint.
Apparently, the author found that when lead based paint was phased out in the US, a generation later, crime rates fell. He compared this with other countries and found a similiar pattern, even when other controlling factors were eliminated (such as increased penalties). He made a plausible argument.
I've seen other studies that suggest that when abortion is made easier, you have fewer kids who grow up criminals. Other studies have found that crime stats relate to the baby boomers, and when the boom tailed off, so did crime. Then there is the study that showed that emergency room treatment has improved so much that a shooting that would have resulted in death a few decades ago, now often doesn't. Therefore, fewer murder cases, although attempted murder would presumably still be present.
Whether any of this is true, I don't know. What seems likely, though is that to give higher incarceration rates ALL the credit for lowering crime is highly suspect. It is likely a combination of many factors.
When I was working for our governor, we had several initiatives get through the legislature to create additional avenues for early release for "non-violent offenders." Even our secretary of corrections was largely in favor of the program, because he, too, expected that he was locking up a lot of people who didnt' really need to be. As part of the process, there were "review panels" on which sat either the secretary himself or one of his top deputies (among other people). After sitting on several panels to hear cases which had already been winnowed out in a screening process to only those technically eligible (i.e., no violent offenders), he remarked to me that he was quite surprised at how few suitable candidates there were for release. He actually told me he didn't realize until then just how hard you have to work to get sent to prison.
Yes it's a terrible shame that a "non-violent drug offender" whose only "crime" was peddling crack to school kids might find himself being sent to prison.
None of this has anything to do with the merits, to be sure. I'm certainly not claiming that "elite opinion" is better than popular sentiment. My guess is that each is biased, in opposite directions.
> the British prison population dropped by about five thousand inmates despite a sharp rise in the crime rate.
But I know your heart is in the right place.
I was struck by something I got from YLS. In my first class, with then-Dean Kronman, in our first case, we dealt with theories of damages for breach of contracts. His point was you have to pay attention to the bottom line; the value of the right is the inverse of the value of the remedy.
I don't know Kronman's views of crime and punishment but for me it is the most powerful justification for real punishment up to and including the death penalty: you vindicate the value of the right abridged by imposing an appropriately severe sentence.
And, btw, most crimes are committed by a handful of people and if you take them off the streets, they will stop victimizing the populus.
Or, the US could be too lenient compared to some essentially crime-free societies!
and conclude the exact opposite of what appears to be a general consensus among criminologists.
Excuse me if this raises huge red flags as to the context appropriateness of these statistics in your argument.
In addition there are a fair number of persons in prison who are mentally ill and/or are addicted to alcohol/drugs. They are there because they were convicted of a crime and sentenced to prison but the illness/addiction was an important contributing factor leading to their incarceration.
It appears that that what are called "nonviolent offenders" in addition to drug offenders are property and public order offenders and it does not appear that very many of them are "first time offenders". If fact the most likely first time offender is a person with no prior record that was convicted of a serious violent crime.
Are the public safety benefits to Iowans worth the cost? I think the answer is no because many of those incarcerated could be rigorously supervised in the community at much lower cost. On the other hand my opinion is that Iowans are willing to pay more for incarceration instead of rigorous supervision because they have no confidence in risk assessment or they are unwilling to take any risks.
One question though: If all it takes is a bit of actual investigation to uncover these facts, then how come as far as I can tell there is NO ONE in the MSM saying this? Is it that they already know the answer they want to hear, and therefore don't do anything that might result in new knowledge? Is the institution really THAT incurious?
Most crime is committed by repeat offenders. Put them in prison and they get less opportunity to repeat. Thus, less crime.
A.) Isn't that just an example of why excessive reliance on plea bargaining by the Justice System is a bad thing?
B.) There are those of us who would argue that selling politically incorrect plant juices/byproducts to consenting adults ought not to be a prison offense in any case.
"experts" in criminology often tend to be the same ivory tower academics that have about as much real world knowledge as your average 'expert economist' who supported efficient market theory did.
just because somebody has a phd and/or teaches at a university doesn't make them an expert.
What appears to be bouncing off your skull is the idea that maybe "selling politically incorrect plant juices/byproducts to consenting adults" is not the actual reason they are in jail.
Which is rather a rather remarkable feat, considering that's the idea you are attempting to discuss.
Agreed, but it still seems problematic to the faction of their oppinion that you like to support an overall conclusion that is in direct conflict to them. That just stinks of cherry picking and intelectual dishonesty. Ok, that's probably way to harsh for a quick blog post, but you get the idea.
Nope, not at all.
i) And when they're selling to minors?
ii) There are far more people who either support the existing criminal penalties for drug dealing or think that they should be made even tougher. If you think that the majority is wrong, then it will be up to you and other like-minded individuals to change their minds. Simply dismissing it as "selling politically incorrect plant juices/byproducts" is probably not the way to go about it.
A rather large problem with that plan is you can't compel someone to take their meds, but you can compel them to stay in a prison.
Richard Pryor, talking in one of his routines about visiting a prison and having been concerned about all the "strong black men there who could have been working for the race" finished up the bit by saying, "Thank God for prisons."
"Why'd you kill them?"
"They home."
It was funny, in the sense that, with Pryor you had to laugh if you didn't want to cry.
Yeah. Hard to get into prison and the meme that it's mostly first-time weed smokers is nonsense, as most people who peddle it already know. See, for example, Talkleft who is in a position to know better.
If a criminal whom we presume would continue to offend is in jail, he's not offending the rest of us. That's pretty well established. The only way that incarcerating him would not drop the crime rate is if there is a replacement for him. And, more to the point, if that replacement would have found honest work if the first guy had not been jailed.
Or, I suppose, in more difficult times, a rising crime rate wouldn't be rising by this guy's contributions, an incremental benefit.
2. An elite is inherently undefined, but I would assume you mean someone of the upper-middle to upper classes and attended well-regarded schools and has a higher education.
3. The difference between elite v. popular opinion is explained in 2 parts:
a) Any sub-group of a whole that does not share every characteristic of the whole is bound to disagree with some of the whole's decision. I'll bet if you compared poverty level people's opinion on crime with the whole, they would be different.
B)An elite can afford to study/treat a disliked group clinically, as an elite always has the option to leave the situation if the undesireable is too undesireable. The metaphor I use is the "safety net" approach. An elite advocating for fewer prison's is like a tightrope walker using a net. If he falls, the net catches him; he can therefore afford to take bigger risks on the tightrope (higher tightrope, use a bicycle, walk on your hands, etc.) than someone working without the safety net.
The safety net for an elite is basically their ability to thrive. Elites often have fungible talents (law, medicine, writing, upper management) that can be used in a variety of locations. They have the funds from higher paying jobs to relocate much more easily. They have personal connections to other places/areas due to mingling with other elites, who have all traveled a lot and met other elites. Non-elites have less money and less fungible or in demand talents---a teacher or steelworker is much more limited in a job market than a lawyer or a doctor.
So an elite can take a more forgiving approach to crime simply because if an area becomes too crime ravaged, they can move easily--or hire protection, if they are the most elite.
so i assume them that you also have a problem with the line "The best scholars have estimated" in the original post? or do you happen to think those scholars are right solely because you like what they are saying? Afterall, "
[scholars] often tend to be the same ivory tower academics that have about as much real world knowledge as your average 'expert economist' who supported efficient market theory did."
I'll grant you that alternatives to prison are definitely worth discussing for non-violent offenders, but before doing that there's a prior argument about "non-violent" that needs to happen, too. My guess (and it's just that, a guess, albeit somewhat informed) that at the very low end of the property-criminal scale are quite a few for whom no other deterrent exists.
On the subject of general deterrence, I remember reading a study (I can't find the link anymore) showing that the perceived likelihood of a criminal being caught and convicted has a greater effect on general deterrence than the sentence they would face upon conviction if they were caught and convicted.
In other words, if a would-be criminal perceives an 80% chance of being caught, convicted and imprisoned for 5 years, they are less likely to commit the crime (more likely to be deterred) than if they perceive a 50% chance of being caught, convicted and imprisoned for 15 years. The likelihood of getting caught/convicted has a much greater deterrent effect than the length of the sentence.
That leads me to wonder if we should adjust our spending priorities along with our sentencing guidelines, so that we spend more money on police, DNA labs and the like, and less on prisons to house criminals with lengthy sentences. The lengthy sentences may deter the criminals that are already imprisoned, but they are costly in resources and perhaps not as effective as other means in deterring criminals who have yet to be imprisoned.
Oh please. In Britain, as here, there are a number of issues where the elites completely ignore the strongly expressed desires of the people. Crime is one of them. Immigration, another.
Yes, among other things.
But more to the point, as between where we put our resources, on catching criminals vs. imprisoning them for eons, I think we will get more bang for the buck out of the former than the latter.
Ok, I take back my statement about well informed commentary. Many standard anti-psychotic medication come in an injectable form. The reason why compulsory medication is so rare is not due to technical limitations, but legal ones (it is legally much easier to send someone to jail).
I WAS referring to legal reasons, thank you very much.
The same people who decry no alternatives to prison are often the SAME people who've made it difficult to legally compel medication... so although I share your opinion of the commentary, I disagree as to who precisely is the uninformed one.
Only if you agree with Kant that if society were to dissolve, all remaining convicted murderers must be executed lest we fail to honor them (and ourselves) as rational beings.
exactly. i tend to cherry pick my experts. those who offer their expertise in fields where it is hard to judge their predictive ability, especially so.
and criminology certainly falls into that camp.
i have no problem with experts who come to conclusions that are vastly different than my preconceptions. that's good. it means you can learn something.
but criminology is much like economics, in that it's a soft science AT BEST, and all the classic jokes about economists (predicted 15 of the last 5 recessions, etc.) can be said about criminologists.
if theory has stood the test of time and real world application (see: robert peel for instance), it's gonna get a lot more credibility.
Huh? What do we do with a guy who does to me what I would not want to do to him--originally, anyway--or anybody else?
Did Kant presume we could run a society simply by repeating the Categorical Imperative morning and evening?
To really stop a budding criminal from blooming into a full-fledged one takes a LOT of personal attention. One 5 minute lecture from the judge at sentencing followed by periodic, mostly routine check-ins with a probation officer doesn't have much of an impact on most folks who are at risk for becoming serious criminals (they work fine for mostly decent folks who made a few mistakes, but not for young men who have grown up mostly fatherless and impoverished, with little experience with the normal, law-abiding world). We have to start in the juvenile system, providing very intensive, hands-on rehabilitation (including life-skills training, how to address adults with respect, how to speak more accepted English, plus general education and more specific job training) programs at earlier signs of criminal conduct.
Because all the judges know that prisons are overcrowded, and moreover have a tendency to breed more criminals, they are often reluctant to give any kind of jail time at all to youngish offenders who may be starting on the path to crime. But there's not a lot of other options out there for the judge; it's often either probation or jail. Some jurisdictions have experimented with the concept of "drug court," where individuals whose primary problem is drugs get intensive supervision, drug-testing, and consistent appearances before the SAME judge. It's a lot of work, but it has shown some success. Going before the same judge time after time does a better job of teaching the offender that consequences flow from his or her choices. Also, the judge is better able to tell whether a particular lapse (a violation of probation) by the offender is just a temporary set-back to be overcome, or whether it is a sign that the offender is not taking this seriously which needs to be shocked out of him with jail time.
In Tacoma, Washington, there is a high incidence of auto theft. According to our local paper the Seattle/Tacoma area ranks in the top 25 cities nationally, and has for many years.
I'm told it generally takes six convictions for auto theft before the sentence includes any jail time. Perhaps Whit could give more details.
Any correlation?
I would guess, for example, that those who doubt that incarceration serves to reduce crime have not spent much time thinking about the subject. Obviously cost and benefit calculations are involved, but the simple equation of removing criminals from society with less crime seems a good first cut.
After reading the comments here it seems my perspective may have been a little bias. You see, I live in NJ, and have to deal with all the wonderful bits of genius that run the state and continuously drive up the state's enormous debt. One problem we've had is an overflowing prison system that we really can't afford to expand. And out of this has come the supposed fact that 32% of our prison population are non-violent drug offenders. This doesn't surprise me seeing as we are home to such wonderful areas as Camden and Newark and the state is one notch from being a full blown police state.
Anyway, I do get the feeling that is a NJ centric issue, as the article points out NJ has the largest percentage of such prison population in the country.
it ends up making you think of the process of ratifying the EU constitution. you vote for it, its ratified; you vote against it, they tell you to vote again and again until you get it right. One of the authors of the constitution said in a snooty fashion that it was too complicated to understand. but isn't that a problem for him? shouldn't he have written something the people could, in his estimation, understand?
You really have to wonder how much they believe in democracy over there.
Pfft, Burkeans. Next thing you'll be telling us that merely because things have tended to fall towards the Earth for centuries we should expect that when we put something down in mid-air it will fall towards to the Earth. Gravity is only a theory and there is no reason to ruin people's lives on such a basis.
There are such things as serial repeat offenders, with some clear groupings among them - violent offenders, habitual sex offenders, drug offenders, etc. Deterrence means little to them - if they had the inner resources not to offend, most wouldn't. The proportion of such offenders who deliberately choose a life of crime is rather small.
Some of these groups merit treatment more than incarceration. Others merit really long jail sentences because getting them off the street has dramatic effects on overall crime rates, public safety from violence, etc.
There are some here who are so vested in their personal issues that they deny the existence of identifiable groups of repeat offenders whose lengthy incarceration produces a major public good.
On the other hand, properly identifying those groups to make the best use of penal insitution space, public funding, etc., merits a real discussion. As an example, California's "three-strikes" law is an attempt to blend identification of persons who merit really lengthy incarceration with sentences for such. Analysis of how effective that has been in practice would be fruitful.
If drug traffickers are non violent why are people so afraid of them and why do some of them carry guns?
I have heard that a company has formed to provide this service, called Oynklent Green [OTC:OYNK]. It may bear watching.
Now, we would like to reduce the number of prisoners because it costs money to feed clothe and house them. To do that, we need to reduce the number of crimes and thus must attack the root causes of crimes.
Any crime prevention experts out there?
The MSM paper I work for says it. Our courts reporter gives a lengthy report on almost every sentencing, quoting the judges lecturing the criminals to the same effect over and over: You've wasted your chances, you're still young enough to turn your life around etc. (And the standard response: Please give me probation, I just need to find a residential treatment program.)
Of course, we have the advantage of being a small county so we can do this. But no one who reads our reports would have the impression that the American judicial system is (as a Milwaukee socialist judge called it in the '70s) "America's only working railroad."
I endorse Pat's view, except to note that quite a number of people charged with minor assault (shoving the wife), petty theft and driving drunk end up spending long months in jail before trial because they are such hopeless schmoos that they cannot make even small bails, and neither their friends nor their bail bondsmen will step up for them.
The underlying reason for this is, IMO, that the only thing these dumb clucks can be relied on to do is screw up again, and everybody knows it.
When my youngest daughter was about 11, I took her with me to district court to watch sentencings one morning. When it was over, she said, "I get it. You tell them you've found Jesus and they let you go."
Smart kid.
Also, comparing American and Canadian crime rates in relation to imprisonment rates' evolution over the time is pretty convincing: none of the arguments brought by Pr Wilson seem to pass the test.
IMHO, imprisonment rate may have something to do with crime rates to certain extend, but its effect may drown in the huge pool of parameters that truly need to be taken in consideration in any serious analysis.
See: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance.htm
After peaking in the 1980s, violent crime and property crime rates (as measured in victimizations per 1000 persons) have declined precipitously. The rate of violent crime today is about two-fifths what it was in the '80s.
France is NOT a single payer system and it is the best health care system in Europe. I think it is an excellent model for the US and I have posted a series of analyses of it and comparison to our own. Mandatory treatment of mental illness has been unenforceable since the 1960s.
Lots of numbers thrown about, so here is the 2004 numbers for state - not Federal - prisons. Link is here.
State inmates 2004
Total 100 %
Violent 52
Property 21
Drug 20
Public-order 7
So, about 20% of state prison inmates are in for serious drug offenses. As Whit noted, some part of this number were charged with multiple crimes - probably involving civilian witnesses - and the government chose to try or accept a plea on the drug counts which probably only involve government witnesses.
Now, something every criminal lawyer and law enforcement person knows. Professional criminals - those who make their primary income from crime - are a very small part of the population. Imprisoning small numbers of professional criminals can have a seemingly disproportionate effect on the crime rate. e.g. A burglar stealing to support a drug habit may commit a burglary a day (very conservative). Putting the burglar in prison prevents 365 burglaries within the jurisdiction. An armed robber may do 2 robberies a week, so putting him in prison prevents 104 armed robberies. A serial rapist may have a monthly frequency, so 12 rapes a year could be prevented.
There are undoubtedly many reasons crime has been down at the same time prison populations are up. But why ignore or debate the obvious? Felons sitting in a cell can't steal your toaster oven, beat up your child or rape your wife. That core group of professional criminals aren't typically responsive to rehab efforts, a job at Burger King, like that. They are dangerous sociopathic personalities with little human empathy. Whatever the cost, locking them away is a sound investment for the rest of us.
The wisdom of the war on drugs is a completely different argument from questioning the efficacy of putting felons in prison.
Both the British police capabilities and rights of subjects (note - not citizens) to self defense are severely diminished in comparision.
You seem to take official European statistics concerning crime, public health, etc., at face value. This is unwise. Some European countries keep accurate statistics of those things. Most do not, and some cook 'em. The United Kingdom is one of the latter. Its crime (particularly sex crime) and public health statistics are notoriously inaccurate, and prepared that way for domestic political reasons.
Thanks for your comment and the well deserved clarification (I will likely consider it to be true even if I was unable to find the proof of it on the url you submitted). But the point remains as we are talking about comparative studies on crime rates. Evaluating reported and reported crime rates the same way for both US and the UK is impossible to do, for various obvious reasons. Hence why I evocated the statistic that ought to be closer to reality in BOTH countries.
As for the decline in different sectors of crime rates since the 1980s, the same phenomenon has been observed in countries that have not been - in the same period of time - as obsessed as the US in giving extended prison sentences. This is what my last argument addressed.
"...evaluating reported and unreported..."
Drug crimes are never victim-free. They pose, as anyone who's ever seen a (psychological or physical) addict knows extremely well, too great a risk. Furthermore they (again obviously) take productivity away from society (this is not marxist, nor fascist, opinion but a simple matter of fact. Dogs abandon intoxicated members of the group, think that's a coincidence ? So do humans, it's not that nobody knows this, but everybody likes to deny it)
It also poses another danger : you would only do so if you have a disrespect for the law. It shows young people that disrespecting the law is okay, that "the system" is only there to impose limits on poor, defenseless kids. It shows kids that when they think they know better what limits are to be imposed, that everybody's opinion should be respected (including that of the kid that thinks stealing is okay, as long as he's the one stealing obviously, ... Including the opinion of the class bully and a girl from 2 grades lower of what constitutes "sexual invitation" ("she likes it rough"-excuse))
By tolerating drug use, or even alcohol addiction, you are making young people fight the police, fight "the system", fight "the government". You are pressuring people to act irresponsibly and learning them to punish responsible people (for the moment probably only by making them social outcasts, but it will devolve into physical attacks)
The fact that people fight "the system" necessitates more laws.
E.g. it is trivially simple to deduce that freedom of assembly has to be curtailed once it gets used to stake out cops, how many cop-killing "flash-mobs" do you think it takes for the president (whoever he is, rep or dem, or perhaps especially a dem pres) to repeal freedom of assembly ? This is an extreme example, but as you can see these freedoms, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of party organizing, are trivially simple to abuse to attack people with if that's your intention.
The same goes for virtually any freedom. Disrespect of the law will, by itself destroy the freedoms Americans enjoy. If the law is acceptably broken by just anyone, then the government is simply the party with the biggest guns. One that can be blown out of the country.
There should be only a bare minimum of law. And that little bit of law should have the status of being utterly inviolate. In Europe's cities nobody minds even violent crimes in the middle of public places. The same could happen in America, and sorry to say, tolerating drug use makes the government the enemy.
When you see a cop running is it acceptable to hit him if he's going to arrest a drug user ? Because that's the next step after tolerating drug use, and quite normal in Brussels in discos.
In summary : Allowing people to violate the law, starting in trivial cases, is what causes totalitarian states to develop. Once breaking the law is acceptable behavior in a small case, a bigger one shows it's ugly head ("sure I raped her, but that guy got of free for dealing, and that's more years in the book"), total breakdown of the justice system is unavoidable, and the only response to that is a totalitarian system.
On the contrary, legalization advocates want to obey and respect the law, by repealing bad laws that are not worthy of respect.
this is patently absurd anti-drug propaganda. i will pick it apart. :)
btw, not to get all into my bona fides, but i spent a LONG time working undercover (as well as working in plainclothes ) drug investigations, and thus have spent hundreds of hours "hanging out' with dopers (dealers and users), so i feel i have a pretty good grasp on this issue. i have also testified as an expert witness.
first of all, you equate drug crimes with addicts. that is your first mistake. many drug crimes are committed by non-addicts. ime, the VAST majority. first of all there are a # of drugs that while psychologically habit forming (note that blogging is psychologically habit forming...) are not addictive. heroin is addictive. marijuana is not. and contrary to anti-drug propaganda, many many drug users can recreationally use drugs w.o becoming addicts.
i knew many while in college, and also while undercover. a person who smokes an occasional joint is no more an "addict" than somebody who has an occasional beer. furthermore, the latter CAN cause addiction, and the former cannot. that's a matter of medical science.
some drugs are very addictive - crystal meth comes to mind. others, less so- cocaine hydrochloride comes to mind. many many people are occasional recreational users of cocaine for example. in college, i knew one of the top students at the school, who occasionally used cocaine - recreationally AND to help him study.
remember, i spent a long time hanging out with recreational drug users (in order to be intro'd to dealers so i could make buys).
2nd of all, drug USE (vs. serious abuse) often does not diminish productivity. in some cases, it even INCREASES productivity. again, that's reality, not anti-drug hysteria. stimulants (generally) increase productivity. caffeine, cocaine, etc. can. NHTSA studies show driving performance ACTUALLY INCREASES on small doses of cocaine, just to explain to you that all drugs in all doses are bad = bad science.
there are LOTS of things that decrease productivity. eating yourself into obesity certainly does. it also costs society TONs of money in health care costs, lost productivity, etc. the CDC estimates that the VAST majority of disease is primarily behavior based, specifically related to obesity and poor food choices. do we criminalize obesity, then?
i'm all about social structures, religion, etc. creating incentives (and disincentives) for aberrant behavior. but drug use =/= abuse, drug use =/= addiction, drug use=/= bad health, etc. etc.
the science, as well as my experience, supports these concepts. your post is just hysteria, rhetoric, and exaggeration.
plenty of illegal drugs can be used responsibly (apart from the fact they are illegal), increase quality of life, increase productivity (even), etc. plenty of legal drugs (tobacco comes to mind) are pretty friggin bad as well.
also from a law enforcement perspective, i would WAY rather deal with a stoner than a drunk. the former are rarely belligerent or violent. their worst offense is eating cheezy poofs and laughing at bad jokes.
Yes, it would suck if my kids started using crack, but if they did, it would be my fault, and their fault -- not the retailers fault.
The major reason for the rapid rise in prisoner population in the 1980s and 1990s was strict enforcement of drug-of-abuse laws, and the widespread use of mandatory minimum sentences for drug-related crimes. When possession of enough marijuana for ten days of personal use automatically becomes possession with intent to sell with a 5-10 year mandatory minimum sentence, it is easy to understand why our prisons are full. This may be a "democratic" strategy (most citizens apparently want to imprison recreational drug users for decades), but that does not make it fair or just.
All right then, you would make it legal to sell crack to children.
If that's really the alternative put forth by the pro-legalization crowd, then there is very little chance that the WOSD will be ratcheted back much less ended anytime soon.
completely unrealistic rubbish.
this has already been explained to be a myth, by people who actually work in the court system, law enforcement, etc.
it's a lie and it does a disservice to the legalization cause.
They would rather endanger all of us by letting crooks run loose than have to admit they are wrong.
First, some commenters are implicitly substituting "possession" for "non-violent," but the two aren't the same. Sale is also non-violent. (That's not to say that drug traffickers can't be violent, but just that sale -- much less the lesser crime of possession-with-intent -- is not a violent crime. And yes, there are mandatory minimums for possession in some places; see, e.g., the Rockefeller laws.)
Second, while few people are sent to jail solely for possession, that's not to say that the criminal justice system doesn't devote resources to those guilty solely of possession. (I realize the focus of the post is prison, but the comments are broader than that.)
Third, as a commenter noted above, looking at the initial charge and then claiming that since the person plea bargained to a lesser one, he must "really" be guilty of the greater one, is misleading, because prosecutors have every incentive to overcharge initially, in order to give them room to plea bargain.
Fourth, making possession and sale illegal turns non-violent crimes violent.
Fifth, making possession illegal -- even if one doesn't send the "criminals" to prison -- helps create violent criminals. Once one has a criminal record, even for a non-violent crime, it's much harder for one to earn a legal living.
You sure you don't want to narrow that down a skosh?
Actually, I think maybe we're just each talking about our local situation. I have no desire to make any assertion about the situation in California; but on the other hand it's clear that WA manages to involuntarily commit quite a few who need it.
maybe the laws for violating the elites property or person are different then for similar incursions against common people.
I think you have this backward. The SAME people who want minimum or no jail time for 'non violent, victimless or minor' crimes are generally the SAME people who have through court challenges and such fought legally compelling medication.
nice try, but that's bs. Drug treatment programs across the country deal with people unable to go a day without a joint--and not because they need it to reduce pain from medical problems.
You can become addicted to any substance: drinking, marijuana, cigarrettes. You're thinking of the old canard that while your body can become physically dependent on heroin, it can't on mary jane. That is true, but addiction doesn't stop there. You can't become medically "addicted" to drinking, either.
The key is psychological addiction. An alcoholic/pothead finds that he needs the effects of his drug of choice to function daily. The drunk needs the drink to de-stress, to deal with social situations, to make himself feel less lonely. The marijuana user has the same problems--the high allows him to escape psychological/social issues he has.
The "marijuana is safer than drinking, you can't get addicted" argument is something brought out by pot legalization groups, and is a failing argument. The better one is "pot is as safe as drinking", which is actually true.
And I'm in favor of legalization, but not because it isn't bad for you or isn't addictive.
Please note that I specifically insisted on comparative homicide rates between US and Canada and the UK. I doubt you read my comment carefully and/or you didn't quite get my intentions.
Besides, if one is to compare crime rates between two or more given countries, other aspects must be taken in consideration as a matter of explanation. It doesn't seem to be a concern to Pr. Wilson in this topic. Comparing numbers without qualifying them is a no no for academicians. But I know you agree with me on that point since this is what you seemed to be concerned with in your comment.
I admit that I did not notice your attempt to deal with the statistical accuracy problem. There are, however, other problems with your limitation to homicides. First, there are vast demographic differences here, such as relative access to firearms (lethality of violent encounters), America's far greater proportion of violence in drug and gang turf disputes as opposed to the greater British proportion of random lower class violence for jollies (i.e., seriousness and motivation of violence), and the uniquely American black urban underclass.
Second there are still statistical games. We count unsolved homicides as homicides. The British often don't. "He died of violence but we don't know if it was a homicide". Or "he died in the hospital several days later and we don't have a suspect, so it wasn't a homicide."
I already explained that i was referring to PHYSICAL addiction. you can become mentally addicted to ANYTHING you enjoy - and that includes blogging on the internet.
so, spare me the semantic games.
you cannot have a physical addiction to mj. as i said. as for cocaine hydrochloride, it's mildly addictive.
on the other hand, drugs like crystal meth and heroin are very physically addictive.
I am well aware how looking at homicide rates alone to qualify national discrepancies in criminal rates is a no go. My aim was not to stick on such limitation but merely to raise an issue I have with Pr. Wilson's methodology. If imprisonment rates truly have a significant effect on crime, we should expect to make the same observations in regards to murder rates, especially when it comes to murders committed by recidivist criminals. Well, available figures indicate we could not conclude in Wilson's direction, much to the contrary (and in a spectacular manner, if I may insist).
You claim that homicide rates should be looked at carefully in their precise contexts. I fully agree. Although I don't know how much I can trust your assertion that British police is looser than its American counterpart in identifying homicides, I suspect it is not significantly the case in regards to Canadian, Australian and most European countries who appear to show very different results than those of the US and, paradoxically, appear to have much lower incarceration rates.
In short, I raised a question regarding the use of sociometric data. What James Q. Wilson seems to be doing here could easily be considered as scientism, in the hayekian sense of the word. I am not to say that detention and jail do not deter crimes from being committed. I believe it does. But I have a big, big problem with the obvious ideological stance Mr. Wilson has taken and, above everything, the weak "demonstration" he came up with in this blog entry. He chose to obliterate datas from his analysis that were too important to be ignored. It comes to the point that, to me, his argumentation lacks seriousness and rigor.