Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

"According to official data, the Swedish prison population has dropped by nearly a sixth since it peaked at 5,722 in 2004. In 2012, there were 4,852 people in prison in Sweden, out of a population of 9.5 million."

So I looked up my home state of Minnesota's inmate count and population for a rough comparison.

"State corrections officials are quick to point out that Minnesota’s incarceration rate is the second lowest in the nation and to note how favorably Minnesota compares with our neighbor to the east. As of July 1, Minnesota had a prison population of 9,772 and a prison budget of $457 million a year. In contrast, Wisconsin has a prison population of about 23,000 and a prison budget of $1.2 billion."[1] Minnesota has a population of 5.379 million. In general, the state prison population in the United States is declining,[2] with Maine currently being the state with the lowest rate of incarceration, and Minnesota's recently fluctuating rate being the second-lowest. Some states have much higher rates of incarceration, so the overall United States rate is high.

As the article submitted here suggests, and as the articles I'm linking here suggest too, all over the world it can reduce incarceration rates to not punish minor drug offenses with incarceration. A determinate sentencing system that emphasizes severity of crimes like Minnesota's[3] keeps first-time, nonviolent offenders out of prison and reserves prison for repeat offenders with known history of violent offenses.

How does Minnesota's system work for me as a member of the public? I can walk all over my neighborhood feeling perfectly safe, and even my children can freely go out in public, walking for a radius of a mile or biking for a radius of four or five miles in any direction, without risk or fear.

[1] http://www.minnpost.com/politics-policy/2013/08/how-minnesot...

[2] http://www.startribune.com/local/216949031.html

[3] http://mn.gov/sentencing-guidelines/images/2013%2520Guidelin...

I mean, look at the numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...

- If you exclude some sub-100K-population countries that probably have weird statistics, the country with the next highest incarceration rate is Cuba, with only 75% the incarceration rate of the US. That's the _next highest_.

- Russia has 67% of our incarceration rate. That's the highest large country other than the US.

- There are only 21 countries that have even half of our incarceration rate, and let's say they're not the ones I think of as having the highest standard of living in the world.

- Looking at the western nations that the US traditionally compares itself to (depending who you think that is), the highest are probably Spain, England and Wales at 20% of our incarceration rate. Germany is at 11%. France is at 14%.

- In North America, Canada is at 16% of our incarceration rate. Mexico is at 29%.

In other words, we could let out _three out of four prisoners in the United States_, and we would still be locking up more people than any of the nations we consider our peers in terms of wealth, democracy, civil rights, etc.

Given the billions of dollars involved and the millions of lives destroyed and the decades this has been going on, we must by now have some pretty good evidence that our extraordinary, unprecedented strategy is better than the alternative, right? We're applying four times the average dose -- there must be a measurable effect by now.

Right?

That said, a very recent report in the UK shows that immigrants are more productive and add value in the UK, contrary to right wing hate mongering. No idea if that is the same anywhere else, but it does show a difference between what we are told and the actual economic facts.

The Swedish article you linked presents a far more nuanced picture and gives even more reasons to question the other link you gave.

It does not say anything about the number of crimes committed, so we can't really used this one to look at that. But it does on the other give a number of possible explanations for why the percentage of "solved" crimes dropped, though notably the article only refers to a drop versus the same period the previous year - it says nothing about longer term trends.

However what it says is interesting:

* The number of particularly complicated crimes, such as IT related crimes, have risen, though it gives no numbers. This claim is so fuzzy that it doesn't really tell us much, unfortunately.

* The police have reduced their focus on traffic related crimes, which includes a lot of easy to solve crimes. E.g. frequent traffic-stops will "net" a lot of crimes that are instantly solved at the same time as you identify the crime. By catching people drunk driving, or driving too fast, for example. Whether or not this change is good or bad really depends on whether it coincides with more accidents etc. If it doesn't, then one might argue the police and legislative have been overzealous about this in the past.

* In terms of drug related crimes, enforcement has shifted from users to dealers. "Solving" drug crimes is much easier when it involves going around and hassling vulnerable, highly visible addicts - where again the crime will be registered mainly if it is solved at the same time, by catching someone with drugs, - vs. tracking down dealers. Some of us would say this shift is distinctly positive even though it makes the numbers look worse.

* At the same time the article points out that numbers for some crimes that have a much more direct effect on the general public, such robberies of homes and, as a follow on, resale of stolen property, have improved.

So many of the crimes they have de-emphasised which previously scored them many easily solved crimes, are victim-less crimes or have no direct victims, and it is not clear that the reduction in solved crimes there is a problem at all. The shift in enforcement especially when it comes to drugs is in line with international shifts in attitudes. The freed up resources have seemingly been funnelled into crimes that have more serious effects on the general public, but which require more resources - such as the effort to identify key individuals tied to break-ins etc. and following them up intensively. This has been done specifically in response to policy decisions by the government, that have asked for a focus on these types of more complex crimes, and so gives even less reason to justify any claim about "abysmal Police work".

No part of the article supports any kind of idea of a crisis in the Swedish police's ability to solve crimes, nor any idea of massively rising crime. It doesn't disprove it either - it is largely orthogonal to the original claims.

I wish I had time to dig around, but I don't. I do find it interesting that you chose this article to illustrate, though, if there's "quite a few recent articles about the abysmal Police work in Sweden", as it doesn't really address the issues.