U.S. Incarceration and Crime Rates Continue to Fall in Tandem

Homicide rates are the key number to track. Other crime statistics have big reporting problems. Police can easily not report a crime (especially when there is pressure to make the stats look good), people stop calling police if they think the police won't do anything, etc. But it is very hard to hide a body.

And homicide rates have risen substantially in the last two years (up 10.4% in 2015, and projected for 13.1% this year). These are the biggest increases in a generation.

http://www.copinthehood.com/2016/09/spin-this-biggest-murder...

http://www.copinthehood.com/2016/11/homicide-is-up-and-its-n...

I'm not sure if the de-incarceration is responsible for the rise in crime. From my following, it seems like the police backing off in response to protests, riots, and consent decrees has a bigger impact. And I'm not a fan of prison -- there are better ways to deter crime and to keep violent criminals away from normal people. But I do notice that most times when I see a murder in the news, and the suspect has been apprehended, the suspect has a disturbingly long wrap sheet and I've wondered to myself, "how was this person allowed back out into civilized society."

>Why does America have such a greater drug fascination than perhaps every other country?

Just to throw out some random thoughts on this:

-Historically a lot more expendable income, especially in the middle and working classes. The opportunity was there, especially during the 60s and 70s when a lot of countries were still rebuilding in an economic sense.

-Our culture seems to put a lot more into individualism, especially in regards to an individuals right to the 'pursuit of happiness'. Somewhere along the way the 'pursuit of happiness' started to become centered around personal pleasure and hedonism. Think of the rock-star (or hip-hop) lifestyle that was glamorized over the past half-century. It mostly boils down to hedonism and extravagant material wealth.

-The overwhelmingly authoritarian crack-down on drugs in America made it a cornerstone of the anti-establishment counter-culture movement. Though perhaps that's a bit backwards, the crack-down came about as a way to control and suppress the counter-culture. But that backfired in a big way. Drugs have practically become a rite of passage into being cool or rebellious. I bet half as many teenagers would try drugs if it weren't for that perception.

-Americans largely enjoy simplicity and convenience. We don't want to make huge lifestyle changes. Take a pill or something to make the problems go away. Simple, easy, don't have to think about it. Gib me my soma.

-The Media. A lot of TV shows and movies are centered around topics that are edgy, illegal, and/or borderline taboo because that's what people want to watch. We always have. Same way we rubberneck for a car crash. I think that's helped normalize drugs.

From the grandfather post to yours:

"There's about 95,000 people in federal prison with a drug offense as their most serious charge. About 11,500 of those charges involved primarily marijuana. (The overwhelming majority of that is for trafficking, not possession.)"

So no, your statement is not correct. If we take 'overwhelming majority' of 11,500 as 60%, that would leave ~5000 prisoners whose 'most serious charge' is possession of marijuana. Or about 2.5% of the federal inmate population (all this assuming that the figures quoted are correct, I didn't source them myself).

I was not aware. Thank you for the links/correction!

Society's tolerance for crime is bizarrely irrational. There will be about 800 murders in Chicago this year -- yawn.

Now imagine if 800 Chicagoans were killed by radiation leaks from a nuclear plant. "Well, you can't have electricity without plutonium. Do you want to turn everyone's lights off?" Or if 800 African-Americans were lynched Emmett Till style by KKK thugs. "Regrettable, but what are you going to do? And don't white people have legitimate complaints?"

Even murder rates can be fudged -- turn the homicide into a "death investigation":

http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/May-2014/Chicago-...

Another point to keep in mind when you see these too-good-to-be-true stories is that criminal subcultures are actually quite conservative. When laws and policies change, it takes time for people to collectively figure out what they can get away with. This makes crime rates a lagging indicator -- we're still experiencing the positive effects of the crime crackdown of the '90s, not just in incarceration rates but in cultural behavior.

The mid-'60s were another period when social scientists realized that punishment was a medieval anachronism. It took 10-20 years to see the full effects of these policies, and another 10 for the political backlash to get started. It seems like we're due for another round of this pendulum.