U.S. Incarceration and Crime Rates Continue to Fall in Tandem • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by burkaman » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 4:04 AM UTC

emmelaich wrote: post #83

kapitza wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 do…

> Society's tolerance for crime is bizarrely irrational. In 1940, a survey was taken of teachers asking them to list the five most important problems in school. They were: (1) talking out of turn; (2) chewing gum; (3) making noise; (4) running in halls; and (5) cutting in line. Fifty years later, the survey was repeated. The 1990 list was substantially revised: (1) drug abuse; (2) alcohol abuse; (3) pregnancy; (4) su…

There is much more to that article than the introduction, but in case anyone is wondering why Krauthammer doesn't cite a source for those surveys, it's because they're not real: http://www.snopes.com/language/document/school.asp, or search "Discipline List" here http://ece.dallasnews.com/archive/

A bit later in the article, Krauthammer really succinctly sums up a major flaw in his own argument:

> As part of this project of moral leveling, whole new areas of deviancy–such as date rape and politically incorrect speech–have been discovered. And old areas–such as child abuse–have been amplified by endless reiteration in the public presses and validated by learned reports of their astonishing frequency.

Yes, perhaps the reason rape seems so much more common is that people in the 1940s didn't understand what rape is. Apparently some people still don't.

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

#102

Post by alpsgolden » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 4:14 AM UTC

pm90 wrote: post #86

alpsgolden wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you expand on the backing off part, though? Peter Moskos has written a lot on this. As part of his PhD, he spent two years as an actual cop in Baltimore. Now he is a professor of criminology in New York. IMO, he does a good job writing in a balanced and truthful perspective about crime. "I don't know what's going on everywhere (or even most-where), but I can tell you a bit about Baltimore. And I suspect it holds…

This is a very good comment, and it seems pretty reasonable. I don't think police are the right agents to enforce societal change though. It seems like a lot of criminals, start off rather young charged with crimes like shoplifting etc, and that record haunts them forever, by shutting off a lot of opportunities forever. I don't know what the solution is, how to prevent so many American youth who would perhaps have be…

I don't think police are the right agents to enforce societal change though.

I mostly agree, but I do think the police could do more to crack down on the most brazen instances of gangs being the de facto government of various neighborhoods.

It seems like a lot of criminals, start off rather young charged with crimes like shoplifting etc, and that record haunts them forever, by shutting off a lot of opportunities forever.

That's not my sense from the various ethnographies I have read. Where are you getting that from?

I found it rather surprising that such kinds of conditions exist in a developed country like the US; its usually something you find in less developed countries

There is a racial element to this. When I was traveling in Brazil, the black favellas of Brazil had a lot of similarity to the black ghettos of the U.S., and the white areas of Brazil had a lot of similarity to the white areas of the United States or of Europe.

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

#103

Post by alpsgolden » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 4:25 AM UTC

fweespeech wrote: post #97

alpsgolden wrote: post #42

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% t…

> 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. Pretending a 49% drop over 20 years is sustainable continuously with no outliers is...absurd. There is a reason these sorts of trendlines are generally drawn over 5-10 years of data, not 1 or 2. Please, just stop pushing your agenda on HN. https://…

I am not arguing about the crime changes over the past 20 years. The original article was about crime changes in the past few years, based on changes to policy in the last few years. I think the changes to crime policy implemented twenty years ago were good, and good impacts on crime. But the changes in the past few years are bad, and will result in an increase in crime.

Pretending a 49% drop over 20 years is sustainable continuously with no outliers is...absurd. ... As Pew has reported in recent years, in fact, the American public is "unaware" that the homicide rate in the United States has fallen by 49 percent over the past twenty years.

In my city, the homicide rate is still 5X higher than it was in 1950s. That's hundreds of people dead each year, unnecessarily. And that's after dramatic improvements in medical technology! I have a lot higher standards than a 50% decline since the 1990 peak. Let's get it back down to the 1950s level.

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

#104

Post by edblarney » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 6:03 AM UTC

bluedino wrote: post #66

alpsgolden wrote: post #42

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% t…

>> And homicide rates have risen substantially in the last two years Homicides are down in the majority of cities, like NYC, Flint and Detroit. However, they are up in cities like Chicago, Baltimore, and St. Louis which are bucking the national trend of lower homicide rates.

Homicide rates - and some other crimes - are massively distorted by small, high-crime urban areas.

If you pluck out the data a very small number of residents from specific hoods in Detroit, Chicago, DC etc. - the 'rest of America's' homicide rates start to look more sane.

If you pluck Aboriginal crime out of Canadian crime stats, the numbers start to look like those of Northern Europe.

I think this is important because random crimes that happen in 'normal circumstances' may not be a function of the crazy social dysfunction in certain neighbourhoods.

I'm not saying anything political here, I do believe anyone murdering anyone else is 'responsible' for it and can't just blame the fact that their dad was in jail, mom absent, schools sucked etc. - however - those are obviously massively correlating factors in some areas, much more than others.

If I were pres, I would basically have a 'national crime / social reconstruction strategy' focused on those 'bad areas' that comprised of a bunch of things.

Most of America is within the range of 'normal' for homicide - but still considerably more violent than other advanced nations.

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

#105

Post by geofft » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 6:34 AM UTC

kapitza wrote: post #88

Well, it's beyond dispute that prison populations nationwide quadrupled -- that's the whole point of "mass incarceration." I don't know of any attempts to model how many crimes these inmates would commit if on the street. Perhaps they're all choirboys, and the real crisis would be a communion epidemic. You're just walking down the street and this 6-5 jacked dude with prison pecs be like "BODY OF CHRIST, BLOOD OF CHRI…

I feel like one becomes a jacked dude with prison pecs by the experience of being in prison, and a Eucharistic minister by the experience of being somewhere rather different from prison.

Which is to say, the crime-prone-ness of people currently under mass incarceration, were they to be mass decarcerated today, is probably not well correlated with their crime-prone-ness had they never been imprisoned in the first place. So if we want to model the effect of reducing mass incarceration, whether scientifically or by thought experiments with alb-vested street gangs, we should not model the effect of unlocking the prison gates and assume that this is an equivalent scenario.

(We can even talk about how life would have been for these people if they had been working in industries that weren't classified as illegal. For instance, if you wanted to be a major marijuana trafficker several years ago, there'd be a certain inherent underworld element to your life even if you never got caught, and the externalities of you living that life were probably bad for society. But if you want to do it today, YC or someone will fund you and the externalities of your life will probably be good for society. But that conversation might be too nuanced or too awkward to have in a reasonable fashion.)

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

#106

Post by kapitza » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 6:34 AM UTC

sdenton4 wrote: post #99

sdenton4 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The citation in the Wikipedia article is a link to a 'TimesWatch' blog post with no backing documentation. What you refer to is called the 'incapacitation' effect, and studies and certain accidental experiments suggest the effect isn't that big: http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2015/07/cr...

Replying to sibling comment: Appealing to "Dr" Pryor doesn't cut it, I'm afraid. Please step back and examine your line of argument here. You're making unfavored claims based on what you call 'reason' and seem unwilling to consider contrary evidence. It's fine to have a contrary opinion, but please refrain from spreading misinformation if you don't care to engage with the topic at hand.

Can you think for yourself without authorities, man? I know it's hard.

This passage from the Economist article I think nicely, and unintentionally, demonstrates the level of insanity here:

The result was that some 20,000 convicts who otherwise would have been sent to prison remained free. The state incarceration rate reverted to 1990s levels without an attending rise. Indeed, studies found no effect on violent crime and a small effect on property crime. (Each year of prison not served due to California's reform was estimated to cause an additional 1.2 auto thefts.) However, the social cost of a stolen Corolla is not clearly greater than the cost to taxpayers of a year of prison time.

So, 20,000 innocent people per year have their cars stolen. But no biggie! Without plutonium, how would we have electricity? If someone steals 1.2 cars per year, why lock him up? It's not worth the cost of a "Corolla."

The result is the insane predatory atmosphere of a normal American (for me, SF) street, in which anyone with any sense is on yellow alert all the time except behind locked doors. As for my children, I'm resigned to being a helicopter parent until they're old enough to... defend themselves, I guess? Should probably start with those karate lessons now.

Meanwhile, in Japan, which has zero tolerance for crime, you can send your five-year-old around the corner to buy milk. Have you ever lived in a crime-free society? Even visited? Try it sometime -- the feeling is downright amazing. You really don't know what you're missing.

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

#107

Post by kapitza » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 6:42 AM UTC

burkaman wrote: post #101

emmelaich wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Society's tolerance for crime is bizarrely irrational. In 1940, a survey was taken of teachers asking them to list the five most important problems in school. They were: (1) talking out of turn; (2) chewing gum; (3) making noise; (4) running in halls; and (5) cutting in line. Fifty years later, the survey was repeated. The 1990 list was substantially revised: (1) drug abuse; (2) alcohol abuse; (3) pregnancy; (4) su…

There is much more to that article than the introduction, but in case anyone is wondering why Krauthammer doesn't cite a source for those surveys, it's because they're not real: http://www.snopes.com/language/document/school.asp , or search "Discipline List" here http://ece.dallasnews.com/archive/ A bit later in the article, Krauthammer really succinctly sums up a major flaw in his own argument: > As part of this pro…

Yes, perhaps the reason rape seems so much more common is that people in the 1940s didn't understand what rape is.

I want to order a time machine and send you back to have a conversation with your great-grandparents, for whom you seem to have so little respect.

Sure, the "list" isn't real. People wouldn't have been passing it around in the '70s if it hadn't reflected the actual experience of living in the '40s, which many, many people at that time remembered well.

A time machine is not actually available. Your great-grandparents are probably dead. But you can still go read a bunch of books from the amazing, wonderful, astoundingly different, and yes -- not at all perfect -- world that they lived in. Chronological chauvinism is not a healthy emotion.

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

#108

Post by michaelbuddy » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 6:42 AM UTC

alpsgolden wrote: post #56

parhurs wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make an intresting point about the stats. Can you expand on the backing off part, though? And the question I would ask is, "what should have been done to prevent this spiraling into a life of crime, and why wasn't it?"

Can you expand on the backing off part, though? Peter Moskos has written a lot on this. As part of his PhD, he spent two years as an actual cop in Baltimore. Now he is a professor of criminology in New York. IMO, he does a good job writing in a balanced and truthful perspective about crime. "I don't know what's going on everywhere (or even most-where), but I can tell you a bit about Baltimore. And I suspect it holds…

Conservatives don't care about the ghetto? No they just run the stores and own the properties there. C'mon get real. You're also wrong about policing in ghettos in the 90s. Policing ghettos is different than suburbs. Because in ghettos people, potential criminals operate under different levels of deterrence. You have to dish out a lot more intimidation. Certain people need to be reminded that they don't run the show. It's a sort of street politics / dominance thing you develop a 'gut' about. I've seen it numerous times, it can be shocking and occasionally TV and movies get it right too.

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

#109

Post by michaelbuddy » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 6:47 AM UTC

alpsgolden wrote: post #60

kapitza wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 do…

It seems like we're due for another round of this pendulum. I fear this too. As someone who now lives in a city that suffered enormously from the 70s crime rise, and benefited greatly from the 2000s decline in crime, the prospect of another crime wave makes me wonder if I should hold off on buying a house.

ask your local trustworthy agents and your local police whether you should buy.

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

#110

Post by kapitza » Sat, Dec 31, 2016, 6:59 AM UTC

geofft wrote: post #105

kapitza wrote: post #88

Well, it's beyond dispute that prison populations nationwide quadrupled -- that's the whole point of "mass incarceration." I don't know of any attempts to model how many crimes these inmates would commit if on the street. Perhaps they're all choirboys, and the real crisis would be a communion epidemic. You're just walking down the street and this 6-5 jacked dude with prison pecs be like "BODY OF CHRIST, BLOOD OF CHRI…

I feel like one becomes a jacked dude with prison pecs by the experience of being in prison , and a Eucharistic minister by the experience of being somewhere rather different from prison. Which is to say, the crime-prone-ness of people currently under mass incarceration, were they to be mass decarcerated today, is probably not well correlated with their crime-prone-ness had they never been imprisoned in the first pla…

Abstractly, this is a good thought. It would probably gain some nuance, however, by watching an hour or so of WSHH, 30 Sec Fights, even the First 48 or Bait Car:

http://www.worldstarhiphop.com/videos/

https://twitter.com/thirtysecfights

Or you could read anything by anyone who's had to teach in an inner-city high school. For instance:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/nyregion/new-york-teacher-...

These are basically the types of people who are involved with America's criminal-justice system. There are certainly a few hard-working Mendocino pot farmers whose luck ran out, but the exception is not the rule.

Albs or no albs, there may well be a way to turn these people into good traditional Catholics. I actually believe there is. But it's definitely not consistent with our modern vision of civil liberties.

Our society has made a lot of efforts to help them let their inner human goodness shine forth spontaneously, perhaps more in the Quaker style than the Catholic. It doesn't strike me that these efforts have been terribly successful. Yes, an American prison is barbarous and dehumanizing -- but it's far from the only barbarous and dehumanizing aspect of America.