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Why prisons continue to grow, even when crime declines

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Re: Why prisons continue to grow, even when crime declines

#11

Post by douche »

djrogers wrote: post #2

;tldr - FTA "Judges are dealing with more repeat offenders now" Seems pretty straightforward then...

The worst thing you could do is put a first-time offender in a prison. Congratulations, you've taken a possibly reformable person, and thrown them into an environment where they need to affiliate with one of the gangs to avoid being shanked or extorted. In the meantime, they go through a networking and educational program to give them the skills and connections to be a criminal. Then, when they do get released and go back out into the world, they are effectively blocked from most avenues of legitimate work, left with severely restricted rights, and are put on restrictive probationary regimes that seem designed to put them back behind bars.

Some days, I wonder if we wouldn't be better off just giving people ten lashes or some other minor, non-permanent corporeal punishment for minor offenses.

Re: Why prisons continue to grow, even when crime declines

#12

Post by kazinator »

jcranmer wrote: post #6
Synaesthesia wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but the US does incarcerate at a much higher rate and for much longer than comparably developed countries, prison conditions are also much worse.

From what I've heard, Japanese prisons are even worse than US prisons.

Yeah. Like when you eat, you have to kneel on a straw mat.

Then again, same thing if you stay in a $150/night ryokan.

Re: Why prisons continue to grow, even when crime declines

#13

Post by rayiner »

67726e wrote: post #9
rayiner wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contempt of court is not a victimless crime. Nobody gets sent to jail just for being disrespectful--they get held in contempt for disrupting the process other people rely on to adjudicate their rights.

So telling a judge to go fuck himself ought to get you some time?

I'm sure in a country of 300 million people it's happened before, but I don't know of an actual example, and certainly it doesn't happen enough to register even as a blip in terms of the number of people in jail or prison.

People get held in contempt for refusing to cooperate with the legal process. Not turning over documents they are obligated to turn over, not testifying when they are obligated to testify, etc.

Re: Why prisons continue to grow, even when crime declines

#14

Post by kunle_e »

"If the United States wants to reduce the number of people in our prisons, King said these results suggest we need a new approach."

When states and municipalities are no longer incentivized to have large prison populations and the same for law enforcement and making arrests, maybe we'll see a reduction in the prison population.

Re: Why prisons continue to grow, even when crime declines

#15

Post by baddox »

rayiner wrote: post #13
67726e wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So telling a judge to go fuck himself ought to get you some time?

I'm sure in a country of 300 million people it's happened before, but I don't know of an actual example, and certainly it doesn't happen enough to register even as a blip in terms of the number of people in jail or prison. People get held in contempt for refusing to cooperate with the legal process. Not turning over documents they are obligated to turn over, not testifying when they are obligated to testify, etc.

I don't know the statistics, but any basic definition of contempt of court gives the two main reasons: disobeying a court order, or being rude to court officials. Being jailed for disrespect is absolutely a major component of contempt of court.

Re: Why prisons continue to grow, even when crime declines

#16

Post by [deleted] »

astazangasta wrote: post #5

This argument doesn't make any sense. What would be the reason for seeing more repeat offenders other than sending more people to jail in the first place? The statistic they're observing is a RESULT of prison growth, not the cause. Obviously they correlate, but without the incarceration rate going up first, this simply doesn't make any sense - the average # of prior offenses can't increase unless the rate of convicti…

[deleted]

Re: Why prisons continue to grow, even when crime declines

#17

Post by meetri »

so, what this article is saying is that while crime has gone down, the average offender has a much more extensive criminal record today than in the past? Doesn't that argument contradict itself? Wouldn't that mean that the real reason prisons continue to grow is that judges hand out more convictions for pettier crimes than in the past?

Re: Why prisons continue to grow, even when crime declines

#18

Post by CalRobert »

rayiner wrote: post #13
67726e wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So telling a judge to go fuck himself ought to get you some time?

I'm sure in a country of 300 million people it's happened before, but I don't know of an actual example, and certainly it doesn't happen enough to register even as a blip in terms of the number of people in jail or prison. People get held in contempt for refusing to cooperate with the legal process. Not turning over documents they are obligated to turn over, not testifying when they are obligated to testify, etc.

In fact, it has escalated to far longer terms.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vN_PEmeKb0

Re: Why prisons continue to grow, even when crime declines

#19

Post by dsfyu404ed »

A lot of repeat offenders are created when they can't have a real life after the first offense and double down on making a living out of crime. Someone who gets their first felony for possession with intent to sell might find that the least bad career option they have after prison is selling drugs. They when they get arrested the next time they have priors and they go away for longer.

Re: Why prisons continue to grow, even when crime declines

#20

Post by yazaddaruvala »

drawkbox wrote: post #10
gok wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drug crimes cover only 16% of inmates in US state prisons [1]. It's higher in Federal institutions, but that's only about 15% of total inmates. I don't disagree that many drug offenders probably shouldn't be in jail, but the US could release all of them and we'd still have the highest incarceration rate in the world. [1] http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p13.pdf (table 13)

Take another look at this data from same source regarding Federal instead of State: Half of males (50%) and more than half of females (59%) in federal prison were serving time for drug offenses on September 30, 2014. [1] [1] http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p14.pdf How many started that way or their crime involved weapons/money that were involved in a drug operation? How many repeat or lifetime criminals were first…

Is it violent to sell drugs/alcohol to a minor?

Does "violent" cover emotional abuse?

How would you rather deal with such crimes?

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