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America’s incarceration rate is in decline

theatlantic.com

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Re: America’s incarceration rate is in decline

#401

Post by jorts »

pamelafox wrote: post #98
bluGill wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the act of having a child is much more deliberate and the parents likely having more resources This is both good and bad. Having a child is very difficult, but it gets harder as you get older. You lack a lot of monitory resources as a teen or the early 20s, but you have a lot more energy, as you get older your body starts decaying you will lack energy. A kid had at 40 will still be depending on your when you are 55…

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me special treatment due to it, but my doctors told me that the "advanced maternal age" threshold (35) was based off outdated research anyway.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…

Same here. The issue is mainly the likelihood of getting pregnant after about 36, from what the fertility folks shared with us. It drops off a cliff.

Re: America’s incarceration rate is in decline

#403

Post by rendang »

testing22321 wrote: post #384
casenmgreen wrote: post #25

Freakonomics argued that crime correlates to whether or not abortion is available. If it is not, crime rates are up, and by a lot. If it is, crime rates are down. When you flip from one to the other, takes about 15/20 years for the effect to show up. Rationale is that forcing parents to have their kids when they're not ready for them significantly increases delinquency in young adults. This is apparently the only pos…

It’s clearly very easy to correlate low crime with free healthcare, education, unemployment, social safety net. Compare the US to every other OECD country. Nobody outside the US would even waste their time on having the discussion it is so blaringly obvious, but those in the US suffering the effects will denounce it till the cows come home.

What do you mean by education? The USA has higher PISA scores than peer countries and also has high rates of tertiary education. Do you think that middle class educated people having high student debt burdens causes crime?

Re: America’s incarceration rate is in decline

#404

Post by jahnu »

saulpw wrote: post #88
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #83

The Atlantic suggests this results from the release of those convicted during a decades long crime wave, which apprently took place when many of us grew up. Perhaps it also tracks with a progressive decline in law enforcement. Whether that is because crime waves not longer exist or whether it is some other reason is a question for the reader. A substanbtial amount of crime is now done via internet. Few are ever convi…

Marijuana possession was the number one crime and is now legal in a majority of states. This seems like the high-order bit.

How do the two sets of states compare on crime rates since the change?

Re: America’s incarceration rate is in decline

#405

Post by ahmeneeroe-v2 »

bluGill wrote: post #55
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…

> the act of having a child is much more deliberate and the parents likely having more resources This is both good and bad. Having a child is very difficult, but it gets harder as you get older. You lack a lot of monitory resources as a teen or the early 20s, but you have a lot more energy, as you get older your body starts decaying you will lack energy. A kid had at 40 will still be depending on your when you are 55…

This is a very good comment. I had my first kid in my mid-20s and my next two in my late 30s.

There are definitely pros and cons, but overall I'd recommend kids in mid- to late-20s.

>However don't wait until you think it is the perfect time.

Yes! There is no perfect time to have kids, but there will definitely be a time when having kids isn't biologically likely anymore

Re: America’s incarceration rate is in decline

#406

Post by mschuster91 »

bluGill wrote: post #327
mandmandam wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In foraging societies - ie, most people for the vast majority of human history - people worked ~15–20 hours/week on subsistence tasks. The rest was leisure or social time (ie, time for being a human later rebranded as 'idleness'). Industrialization has pushed inequality to extremes while raising hours worked - even as productivity keeps shooting up. There's no good reason for people to tolerate this; it's just exploi…

Those hours worked are carefully defining a lot of work away. Most things people eat need hours of preparation that isn't counted in you 15-20 hours for example. When you relook at what people did most of the time you realize they had to work really hard for a lot more hours to survive.

> Most things people eat need hours of preparation that isn't counted in you 15-20 hours for example.

Yeah, and we now expect women to work 40+ hour work weeks and house work on top of that. That is the thing causing societal reproduction rates to plummet.

Let's just do the math: a day has 24 hours. The recommendation for healthy sleep is 8 hours. Then, you work for 8 hours, with 1 hour added for the unpaid lunch break. That's the two largest blocks, leaving 7 hours to distribute... dedicate 3 hours for the "staying alive" stuff (preparing for going to work in the morning, aka breakfast, shave, getting dressed, preparing dinner, eating dinner, have a shower and at least some unwind time to fall asleep).

And that in turn leaves only 4 hours for everything else: running errands (aka shopping, dealing with bureaucracy, disposing of trash, cleaning), just doing nothing to wind down your mind from a hard day at work, hobbies, social activities (talking with your friends and family or occasionally going out) and, guess what, actually having sex.

Easy to see how that's already a fully packed day. Society just took the productivity gains from women no longer having to deal with a lot of menial work (washing dishes and clothing, as that got replaced by machines, and repairing clothes) and redistributed these hours to capitalism.

And now, imagine a child on top of that. Add at least half an hour in the morning to help get the kid ready for school, an hour to drive the kid to errands (because public transit is more like "transhit"), and another two hours to help the kid with homework because that workload is ridiculous and you don't want the kid to fall behind kids of parents rich enough to afford private tutors. But... whoops, isn't that just about the entire "everything else" time block? And younger children need even more work, constantly changing nappies, going to the doctor's all the time because it's one new bug every new week and sometimes the bug also catches you cold...

Re: America’s incarceration rate is in decline

#407

Post by potato3732842 »

dmix wrote: post #226
kragen wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, leaded gasoline was being banned in many rich countries at about the same time, and there's a positive correlation between the year it was banned and the year that violent street crime began to decline.

So reducing lead exposure immediately changes your brain to do less crime?

Kids that grew up huffing leaded exhaust are more bad decisions inclined than they would otherwise be. It's not just crime. The most heavily leaded cohort in the US is also known for drunkly crashing their muscle cars and wasting their youth smoking pot in a commune.

Bad decisions like these get less common with age, partly because of consequences (jail, death, etc), partly because getting up to no good requires free time, ambition and freedom, all of which are in shorter supply with age and the resultant responsibilities competing for every individual's supply of these resources.

So if the replacement cohort of people who are coming into prime crime age decline to participate at the same rates the crime rate goes down.

Re: America’s incarceration rate is in decline

#408

Post by mschuster91 »

pc86 wrote: post #360
marcus_holmes wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minimum wage is more complicated in Australia. There are effectively minimum wage levels set per profession, known as awards. This is the list of awards: https://www.fairwork.gov.au/employment-conditions/awards/lis... it's pretty extensive Each award is also complex, and covers a range of issues in the employment. For example, this is the Professional Employee award: https://awards.fairwork.gov.au/MA000065.html just…

Is "inheritance" used in a different way here similar to how "award" is, or are you saying you often need to inherit money from your family in order to be able to buy a house in Australia?

> or are you saying you often need to inherit money from your family in order to be able to buy a house in Australia?

Tell me a place in any Western society (outside of run-down rural areas/flyover states) where an average employee (i.e. no ultra-rich tech hipster bros) is able to afford a home before the age of 30 purely by his own savings and income. That is frankly no longer a reality for most people.

Re: America’s incarceration rate is in decline

#409

Post by potato3732842 »

snarf21 wrote: post #368
philipallstar wrote: post #321

Incarceration isn't the same thing as crime. If the most populous state by far (California, almost 40m people in 2025) passes a law[0] that stealing things under $950 is a misdemeanor rather than a felony, then crime can continue while incarceration rates drop. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_California_Proposition_47

This is a very one sided presentation of the facts. This fact is generally used to suggest that theft is all a liberal blue state issue. The highest felony theft amount in the US is in red Texas and is $2500. Around 40 states have a *HIGHER* felony $ limit for theft than California. If you think about it, it makes a lot of sense to not spend $10K+ to jail someone for stealing $500 of stuff. There are more cost effect…

The whole hoopla around the felony status is just a proxy. when you commit a bunch of felonies there's all sorts of coded in law and process (sentencing guidelines) that apply (as well as KPIs, cops and prosecutors care about being able to say they put felons away) so you can't really be habitually felonious very much without winding up behind bars.

Below the felony threshold the system is far more free to let you go back out and keep doing what you're doing.

So the actual dollar threshold of felony theft is really just a crappy (because not all states go equally hard on non-felony crime) proxy for the rate of recidivism.

Re: America’s incarceration rate is in decline

#410

Post by winter_blue »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #367
bluGill wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the act of having a child is much more deliberate and the parents likely having more resources This is both good and bad. Having a child is very difficult, but it gets harder as you get older. You lack a lot of monitory resources as a teen or the early 20s, but you have a lot more energy, as you get older your body starts decaying you will lack energy. A kid had at 40 will still be depending on your when you are 55…

Lifestyle is key here. An older friend conveyed to me pretty much the exact same thing you are, that he cannot imagine having kids at 40 because you will not be able to keep up with them energy wise. You get old and your body really starts to give in. Alright Geoff, thanks, but you are 54 and do zero exercise, have a diet of eating out at fast food and fast casual restaurants, a body type that would be described as "…

> Alright Geoff, thanks, but you are 54 and do zero exercise, have a diet of eating out at fast food and fast casual restaurants, a body type that would be described as "meatball", and a list of medical conditions which all scream lifestyle change.

> Meanwhile at trail running meets, I bump into 60 year olds still giving some 35 year olds a run for their money.

Yup, this is very much key.

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