Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

America’s incarceration rate is in decline

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 586 posts

Re: America’s incarceration rate is in decline

#211

Post by 3eb7988a1663 »

energywut wrote: post #133
pengaru wrote: post #3

Does that mean we can stop keeping mouth wash and deodorant behind lock and key on store shelves and resume locking up the criminals making messes of our cities?

Putting poor, desperate people in jail isn't going to solve the systemic issues that create poor, desperate people. Locking up people for petty theft is almost certainly FAR more expensive than the cost of the materials being stolen. It costs tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars to house an inmate every year, to say nothing of the damage it causes that inmate. Prisons make criminals more likely to co…

This article claims that the inmate costs per state range from $23k/year (Arkansas) to $307k/year (Massachusetts).

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cost-per-prisoner-in-us-sta...

Re: America’s incarceration rate is in decline

#212

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

999900000999 wrote: post #150
pamelafox wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had my children at 36 and 38, and I'm the mother, and energy-wise, I've had no issues. Yes, they considered me to be of "advanced maternal age" in the OB department and gave me special treatment due to it, but my doctors told me that the "advanced maternal age" threshold (35) was based off outdated research anyway. In the bay area, most of the mothers I've met were around that age, and my friends are having their k…

The issue here is this can lead people to pushing it till 40+. I was talking to a nice girl up until she mentioned still wanting kids in her late 40s. Maybe I’m old school, but telling someone you froze your eggs the same day you meet them is weird. Society itself is broken. You SHOULD be able to graduate high school and make enough to support yourself and a family with a bit of struggle. This rapidly transformed int…

> For myself , I wish I made this happen in my mid 20s. I had to move back home to take care of a family member (fck cancer) and I suffered various personal setbacks due to it.

I hear ya. My spouse developed mental illness after sons 4,5 were born. A spouse can sabotage a lot of things when they set their mind to it - and their mind never stops. Not even at 3am. The first year was hard. The second was harder. After 5ys we run out of adjectives. After 15y we're using Dr.Seuss letters to spell out how things are.

Re: America’s incarceration rate is in decline

#213

Post by Nopoint2 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #99
strict9 wrote: post #12

> Rapidly declining numbers of youth are committing crimes, getting arrested, and being incarcerated. This matters because young offenders are the raw material that feeds the prison system: As one generation ages out, another takes its place on the same horrid journey. Another factor which will soon impact this, if it isn't already, is the rapidly changing nature of youth. Fertility rates have been dropping since 200…

It's lead. Lead concentration in America "rapidly increased in the 1950s and then declined in the 1980s" [1]. There is a non-linear discontinuity among kids born in the mid 80s, with linear improvements through to those born in the late 2000s [2]. Arrest rates for violent crimes are highest from 15 to 29 years old (particularly 17 to 23-year olds) [3]. They're particularly low for adults after 50 years old. We're aro…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44365162

Re: America’s incarceration rate is in decline

#214

Post by smallmancontrov »

3eb7988a1663 wrote: post #207
pjdesno wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just law enforcement and sentencing - there are verifiable numbers for the results of certain crimes - homicides and auto theft come to mind - and most have declined precipitously. E.g. Boston had 1,575 reports of auto theft in 2012, compared with 28,000 in 1975; Massachusetts had 242 murders in 1975, and 121 in 2012. (a 56% drop in homicide rate, as population went up 14%)

That car theft number is blowing my mind. I would have easily guessed 10x that. Are there any aspects of the crime that make it less appealing? Electronic counter measures too good? Price of replacement parts no longer carry a premium? Too easy to get caught?

Consumer goods went on a 50 year deflation streak while health care, housing, and education pumped to the moon. That's its own problem, but it's hard to steal any of those three things.

Re: America’s incarceration rate is in decline

#215

Post by throwawaycities »

treyd wrote: post #199
throwawaycities wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why bother stopping at crime rates with that confidence? The 1st recorded cases of fatty liver disease and T2D in children were in the 1980’s are have continued growing since - lead must have been protecting children’s health. Testosterone has been on a sharp decline during this same time period - lead must promote healthy testosterone production. Debt of all kinds, from the national debt, to household debt, to stude…

If you do the same comparison of the rates of leaded gasoline during childhood to adulthood crime rates across different countries which have different histories of leaded gasoline usage, you notice that the correlation persists. While of course correlation does not imply causation, it's a link that's fairly well-established in literature, it's not a spurious correlation, and we know that lead has concrete neurologic…

Since 1970 testosterone has declined 1% per year and it’s well established higher testosterone is linked to impulsive and violent criminal behavior and in countries like the US crime rate is at a 50 year low correlating with this decline starting 1970.

There are many factors that correlate and potentially contribute to a reduction in incarceration rates.

There are estimated 1.8-1.9M incarcerated. Since 1980 to the present there are well over 1M violent crimes (rape, murder, aggregated assault, robbery) per year. Let’s look at another factor that might contribute to falling incarceration rates that tend to explain this discrepancy in incarceration vs total crimes…conviction rates:

Murder: ~57.4% in 1950 vs. ~27.2% in 2023—a ~2.1x difference.

Rape: ~17.3% in 1950 vs. ~2.3% in 2023—a ~7.5x difference.

Aggravated Assualt: ~19.7% in 1950 vs. ~15.9% in 2023—a ~1.2x difference.

The neurological effects of lead don’t tend to explain away falling police clearances nor convictions.

Re: America’s incarceration rate is in decline

#216

Post by Nursie »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #184
spinner34f wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flip-side of an aging society with declining fertility is that older people, with fewer children are likely to be less sympathetic to children, and you could see the incarceration rates increase, or remain steady, as less severe infractions are punished more harshly. We recently saw this play out in the Queensland, Australia, state election where the opposition party, which was pretty much out of ideas, ran a sca…

Australia has had pretty terrible “jail children like adults” opinions for a long time. Politics in Melbourne constantly turns on fears of youth [black immigrant] crime waves that are making people afraid to leave the house. https://raisetheage.org.au/

Queensland seems to be making a lot of noise about that at the moment as well.

Seems to be this weird reasoning (and I know it has cropped up in the US too) that - if they did an 'adult' crime they should be tried as an adult. It totally ignores what we know about developing brains - they are not fully developed, they don't consider consequences the same way as older people.

That's not to say they should be allowed to 'get away with it', but we need to take into account that it's not really the same thing as adults doing it.

Re: America’s incarceration rate is in decline

#217

Post by tjpnz »

GuinansEyebrows wrote: post #8

this is great news. but... i fear the new avenues of business sought by companies that operate for-profit prisons - i don't expect they'll just eat the losses of declining populations in their main moneymakers, and we're already starting to see them work on detention facilities for DHS etc.

Just get a few more Ciavarellas[0] elected and boom! Kids for Cash 2.0 - Little Timmy will never mouth off in class ever again.

0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Ciavarella

Re: America’s incarceration rate is in decline

#218

Post by Nopoint2 »

Nopoint2 wrote: post #213
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's lead. Lead concentration in America "rapidly increased in the 1950s and then declined in the 1980s" [1]. There is a non-linear discontinuity among kids born in the mid 80s, with linear improvements through to those born in the late 2000s [2]. Arrest rates for violent crimes are highest from 15 to 29 years old (particularly 17 to 23-year olds) [3]. They're particularly low for adults after 50 years old. We're aro…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44365162

Let's add an example to illustrate the difference:

Let's say that there is a correlation between the number of flights between London and New York, and the prices of sulfur. The correlation is near perfect.

When your neocortex is working, you ignore it. You can't create any plausible scenario how this could work (it doesn't exist within your latent space) so you don't learn anything from it, it doesn't even register in your brain as anything worthy of notice.

But everybody with the cerebellum only absolutely does learn it. And completely for real, not just as some fun factoid, but as a fact that they know the same way you know that airplanes have wings, and everybody knows it, only you don't.

Then, one day out of nowhere people start buying sulfur. Your questions are met with laughter and mockery "dude, everybody's buying sulfur, are you autistic?". And you don't know, because you haven't even learned the pseudo facts that everybody else bases their reasoning on.

This is only a made up example, but this is exactly how it works.

Re: America’s incarceration rate is in decline

#219

Post by dcow »

strict9 wrote: post #12

> Rapidly declining numbers of youth are committing crimes, getting arrested, and being incarcerated. This matters because young offenders are the raw material that feeds the prison system: As one generation ages out, another takes its place on the same horrid journey. Another factor which will soon impact this, if it isn't already, is the rapidly changing nature of youth. Fertility rates have been dropping since 200…

We may have swung the pendulum a little too far towards deliberate, though. The birthrate right now is below replacement rate, meaning that if we keep going like this (even if the birthrate doesn't keep trending down and holds steady) that society will die off. We need to figure out how to build an economy and society that can facilitate deliberate responsible parentage younger and more often. Luckily we have generations to solve the problem, but it’s there looming.

Re: America’s incarceration rate is in decline

#220

Post by [deleted] »

throwawaycities wrote: post #215
treyd wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you do the same comparison of the rates of leaded gasoline during childhood to adulthood crime rates across different countries which have different histories of leaded gasoline usage, you notice that the correlation persists. While of course correlation does not imply causation, it's a link that's fairly well-established in literature, it's not a spurious correlation, and we know that lead has concrete neurologic…

Since 1970 testosterone has declined 1% per year and it’s well established higher testosterone is linked to impulsive and violent criminal behavior and in countries like the US crime rate is at a 50 year low correlating with this decline starting 1970. There are many factors that correlate and potentially contribute to a reduction in incarceration rates. There are estimated 1.8-1.9M incarcerated. Since 1980 to the pr…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN