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Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

theguardian.com

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Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#151

Post by DanTheManPR »

nzp wrote: post #145
tokenadult wrote: post #122

I was glad to see that the recent article kindly submitted here gives the inmate count for Sweden, and Sweden's population. "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 roug…

> 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. I'm genuinely curious, I'm honestly not trolling, is this state of affairs remarkable in the US these days? Is this really an…

It's not remarkable in most small towns and rural areas. Big cities are more of a mixed bag - there is always "the bad part of town" with very high crime rates, but the middle-class suburbs (where a great many HN users live) usually have rates of violent crime comparable to western Europe. Naturally the prison population comes almost entirely from those bad neighborhoods, and so our insane incarceration rates are mostly invisible to the suburb dwellers.

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#152

Post by draugadrotten »

Xylakant wrote: post #98
draugadrotten wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love your source. >The rise has stalled and the trend has been reversing with a slight decline of 1% in 2012 [1]. From your source: "Since 2003, the number of reported offences has increased by approximately 147,000 (+12%). Since 1975, the trend in the total number of reported offences has been characterised by a continuous increase." That a 1% decrease in the statistics of a single year represent any significant c…

You're glossing over my main point: Picking a single number without context or interpretation from a statistic is devoid of any meaning. The statistic measures "reported crimes" as a total value, not even per capita. That's a very long shot from "committed crimes". It's really just only what people report, if it's a crime or not. The number of reported crimes is most likely below the number of actual crimes for most…

I agree that crime statistics are highly context sensitive and must be handled with caution. Sweden's rape statistics are a good example. Sweden has more rapes per capita than most countries, it's even the second highest in the world. However, that's because Sweden's definition of rape is including so much more than any other country. Ask Julian Assange about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#Sweden

That new crimes are codified in law, such as "internet fraud", and is one of the fastest growing seems to causing more crimes, not fewer. It doesn't invalidate the comparison between years for all crimes, and unless you want to argue that newly codified crimes are less serious than old ones, I can't really see a problem with new laws being included in statistics, too.

I'd like to conclude saying that I appreciate your posts on this subject and have read them with interest.

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#153

Post by berntb »

Xylakant wrote: post #144
draugadrotten wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No part of the article supports any kind of idea of a crisis in the Swedish police's ability to solve crimes I can't be reading the same article as you, but I'll leave it at that. Since you claim to read Swedish, try this google search for Swedish police solves fewer crimes: https://www.google.se/#q=svensk+polis+l%C3%B6ser+f%C3%B6rre+... I paraphrase the first few hits: - Despite more money, fewer crimes a solved (…

Since you already admitted that you liked my source I assume that you also read the introductory page which contains this enlightening paragraph at the top [1]: Comparisons between countries that are based on their individual crime statistics require caution since such statistics are produced differently in different countries. Criminal statistics do not provide a simple reflection of the level of crime in a given co…

Comparisons with Sweden is probably hard.

I seriously think of Swedish media as something out of Animal Farm these days. Or 1984.

I got vertigo a month or so ago, when the editor of DN (largest non-tabloid, or so they claim) discuss how good news are never big news, but bad news are. About the same time I saw in Forskning & Framsteg that the group rape statistics has increased fourfold since the 1990s. That had not been discussed at all in the media.

Lots of other examples exists.

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#154

Post by berntb »

atlantic wrote: post #28
csmuk wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like Nottingham in the UK's bullshit crime statistics. "Arrests fallen! Crime rates lower than ever!" Actually people just do it vigilante style or don't bother reporting it because the police are fucking useless. I mean I caught a person breaking into my car, had photos of the person doing it, the car was covered in finger prints, they arrived in another stolen car with plates that were photographed, left the…

I had a friend in Belgium who was raped in the street one evening by three young men. The police did not take much interest. There was no medical examination done. They said they would call her back to look at some pictures but they never did. I've fought off muggers several times over the years. I've never bothered to call the police, especially as the actions taken in self-defence might themselves constitute a crim…

I've lived in Sweden and Finland. That sounded more like Sweden. In Finland the police is trusted and appreciated. Among the most trusted civic functions in interviews, afaik.

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#155

Post by berntb »

draugadrotten wrote: post #152
Xylakant wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're glossing over my main point: Picking a single number without context or interpretation from a statistic is devoid of any meaning. The statistic measures "reported crimes" as a total value, not even per capita. That's a very long shot from "committed crimes". It's really just only what people report, if it's a crime or not. The number of reported crimes is most likely below the number of actual crimes for most…

I agree that crime statistics are highly context sensitive and must be handled with caution. Sweden's rape statistics are a good example. Sweden has more rapes per capita than most countries, it's even the second highest in the world. However, that's because Sweden's definition of rape is including so much more than any other country. Ask Julian Assange about it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#Sweden Th…

>>However, [the statistics are the 2nd highest on the planet] because Sweden's definition of rape is including so much more than any other country.

I've seen that claim often, but never some real facts which compares data. You don't have any, either?

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#156

Post by Daniel_Newby »

bowlofpetunias wrote: post #68
belorn wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats what happen when politics start to dictate priorities for the police. A large group of the police force and prosecutor have been dedicated to hunt down file sharing. An other group is dedicated to maintain the national firewall. Others deal with hunting down all those 16 years old kids who "hacks" websites with DDOS. This failure of the police and the justice system has very little to do with the police, and al…

In a functioning democracy, politics (i.e., the will of the people) should dictate the priorities for the police. The corruption of said politics however is a different matter.

In a functioning democracy, a parliament of whores A/B tests slogans and suits until they find a winning combination, then do whatever they want.

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#158

Post by berntb »

draugadrotten wrote: post #140
jeltz wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The same is true in Sweden only worse. I would need a good source for this, since some newspapers in Sweden are rather right-wing with even some quite extreme libertarian columnists.

Gothenburg University JMK surveys all all journalists in Sweden, and last time: 41 procent Miljöpartiet (green party, left-wing) 15 procent Vänsterpartiet (communist, extreme left) Public Service Radio Sveriges Radio: 54 procent Miljöpartiet (green party, left-wing) Public Service TV Sveriges Television: 52 procent Miljöpartiet (green party, left-wing) http://www.journalisten.se/nyheter/svenska-journalister-fore...

If you asked Swedish police, you'd get much lower support for extreme right and pure racism than the national average. They probably aren't lower, but they know that these opinions aren't tolerated.

Swedish journalists are very much aware of that left extremist opinions is sensitive for their profession.

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#159

Post by Xylakant »

draugadrotten wrote: post #152
Xylakant wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're glossing over my main point: Picking a single number without context or interpretation from a statistic is devoid of any meaning. The statistic measures "reported crimes" as a total value, not even per capita. That's a very long shot from "committed crimes". It's really just only what people report, if it's a crime or not. The number of reported crimes is most likely below the number of actual crimes for most…

I agree that crime statistics are highly context sensitive and must be handled with caution. Sweden's rape statistics are a good example. Sweden has more rapes per capita than most countries, it's even the second highest in the world. However, that's because Sweden's definition of rape is including so much more than any other country. Ask Julian Assange about it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#Sweden Th…

That new crimes are codified in law, such as "internet fraud", and is one of the fastest growing seems to causing more crimes, not fewer. It doesn't invalidate the comparison between years for all crimes, and unless you want to argue that newly codified crimes are less serious than old ones,

There is no problem per se in including newly codified crimes in statistics. It's also perfectly fine that that this causes a rise in those statistics. It still compels caution when reading those statistics:

Let's best take a totally contrived example: Beginning with the first of December, eating Surströmming is forbidden due to new environmental protection laws. This will cause a sudden spike in the crime statistics because once acceptable behavior is now outlawed. It also causes the police to suddenly solve a higher percentage of crimes since the perpetrators are easily identifiable by their smell. Did the world get better? Worse? The statistic just tells us a naked number.

Something similar happens with fraud with help of the internet and probably more with illegal access to computer systems: People were doing it before, but it never showed up in the statistics since even though it was still as bad of a behavior as it is now, it was not illegal since there was no appropriate law.

Figures for rape and sexual molestation are rising? What does that mean? More people getting raped? Or does it mean that even though less people are raped, a higher percentage are in the position to report it? The definition of rape has - rightfully - been broadened in the last decade. In germany, rape in a marriage was only codified as "rape" in 1997 (!) (in words: nineteen nintyseven). That certainly causes a rise in the relevant statistics, but it doesn't mean that more women are raped - it just means that visibility has increased. (which, by the way, is a good thing in itself)

That's what I mean by "context matters". You can't derive any meaning from the naked numbers. In the extreme case, a rise in crime stats may "just" mean that the society decided to outlaw some specific behavior. In reality it's probably a mixed bag of a lot of reasons.

EDIT: Formatting for the quote.

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#160

Post by saraid216 »

madaxe wrote: post #108
marvin wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not how a democratic nation is supposed to work. So please don't hold up this characterization of the police as something which is inevitable. The democratic ideal is that the police have a national monopoly on the legal use of violence, and the use of this violence is dictated by the laws and the courts. This is how well-working democratic nations work, and it is indeed how the police force in my home countr…

No, it isn't, but it appears to be the endgame of representative democracy. I'd suggest reading Hobbes' Leviathan, or perhaps Hayek's Road to Serfdom, if you haven't already, as both anticipated this exact malaise. The US and the UK are in the terminal stages of decline. The representative democratic ideal is ultimately revealed to be a fiction, and the rule of law is a falsehood - for without a universally applied r…

> I'd suggest reading Hobbes' Leviathan

WELP. Time to find ourselves a king.

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