Perhaps that is wrong?
With offenders each year committing well over a million very serious violent crimes and another 1.6 million burglaries, with police each year arresting 1.5 million violent offenders, and with courts each year convicting more than a million persons for a felony, it is perhaps not so surprising that state and federal prisons hold one and a half million inmates. If we have a “mass incarceration” problem it appears to be because we have a “mass crime” problem, despite the downward trend of the past two decades.
Does America over-incarcerate?
Joseph M. Bessette writes, only two fifths of those convicted of felonies in state courts are actually sentenced to prison. Of the rest, about half receive no incarceration (mainly probation) and h…
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Thanks for posting this, it shows what you are.
I will remove you from circles and suggest to others to do the same.
+Andreas Geisler what? I mean, as a liberalish person myself, I think America probably over-incarcerates (and I've made that argument here on G+ multiple times), but that doesn't mean I'm just going to ignore the arguments of people who think that perhaps thats not the case.
It sounds like you're being pretty anti-intellectual here.
Honestly, I'm pretty flabbergasted at your close-minded response.
+Dustin Wyatt To not repost is not to ignore.
And to repost without any kind of analysis suggests agreement.
If you do not mean to underwrite the conclusion, you have to do more to show you're not.
+Andreas Geisler I mean, sure if you want to completely disregard the totality of what I've said on G+ for literal years. I'm sorry that I didn't toe the line quickly and vigorously enough for you.
That aside, you're just going to completely ignore the arguments at the link? You're so positive your position is correct?
lh3.googleusercontent.com
Also, the link doesn't lead to an analysis, just to some kind of disjointed comments page.
Well, maybe I should have linked to the source linked right at the top of the page I did link to, but Kling adds some interesting points so thats why the link goes where it does.
If you don't want to go through the intermediate step, you can just go here (copy/pasted from the top of the page I linked to): http://www.claremont.org/crb/article/more-justice-less-crime/
+Dustin Wyatt​ Doesn't surprise me at all. I blocked him a long time ago – if you don't agree with his positions 100% without question, then you're clearly a right wing nut job not worth talking to. He's living in his own self-imposed echo chamber.
I do feel like the question is being asked wrong. America does over-incarcerate – that's obvious, just by comparing our incarceration rate with other nations. We should, of course, be asking why we incarcerate so many people. Saying that we incarcerate people because they commit crimes doesn't finish the discussion.
The war on drugs is a huge part of the problem, turning ordinary people into violent criminals. One need only look to prohibition to see what making a common and desired drug illegal can do to the crime rate.
Related, we should also look at how society treats criminals. You might start with a short sentence for a minor drug crime. But your past incarceration makes it nearly impossible to get a job. Without a job, your best means of supporting yourself becomes crime. Crime begets violence as career criminals compete with each other.
Yes, we over-incarcerate. Yes, it's because people commit crimes. But perhaps the crimes are caused by over-incarceration and a society that forces criminals back into crime.
If you wanted to debate this, why not choose something with an analysis, instead of some no-name blog of some no-name Cato institute member?
https://jacobinmag.com/2017/08/mass-incarceration-prison-abolition-policing
+Jimmy Brokaw Whilst the argument that incarceration causes more violent crime is plausible (and I think accurate), I think that explanation is only part of a problem with a multitude of causes.
+Andreas Geisler I didn't want to debate it?
As far as I can tell, you did.
+Andreas Geisler And I'm not so sure you can take some intellectual high ground by attacking the source rather than the arguments.
(In fact, I'm positive you can't)
+Andreas Geisler When you read the link and you didn't like what it said, you went out and Googled the author and who/where he works for didn't you?
+Dustin Wyatt So, you repost a page that has no arguments, for no reason?
+Andreas Geisler Are you really of the opinion that I either A) posted it to debate about it, or B) I posted it for no reason?
You honestly can't think of any other reasons for me to post it?
+Dustin Wyatt Actually, I googled the name in the URL before I even opened the link. Standard precaution.
But did you even read the page you linked to? There is no argument there. It's just a couple of quotes and some vague talk.
+Andreas Geisler Did you read my comments about why I linked to the page I did?
+Andreas Geisler Why is that a standard precaution?
This has no place in a science collection. The answer is unequivocally yes, based on evidence that's accumulated over the past half-century. Anyone who's researched (or lived through) the 70s and 80s, when the incarceration rates began to skyrocket, knows this. The arguments to the contrary are all based on long-debunked not-science nonsense theories.
en.wikipedia.org – Incarceration in the United States – Wikipedia
+Adam Liss What specifically is incorrect?
+Dustin Wyatt Why do I check whose site I visit? Because the world is full of crackpots.
+Dustin Wyatt For starters, the very premise that "…the question is not whether the United States has too many people in prison for a country of its size, but whether it has too many people in prison for a country with its number of crimes and convictions" requires proof that the "number of crimes and convictions" is an accurate indication of the number of people who are legitimately imprisoned.
And that requires an explanation of the graphs I posted.
Just to be clear, in other venues and here on G+, I've brought up the very points the America-over-incarcerates camp have/will bring up here.
However, as with most all "movements" based upon social sciences, there are large swathes of people who are over-confident in their positions.
In other words, when it comes to where it actually counts, I'm voting against the law-and-order candidates, and I'm advocating for anti-over-incarceration policies. In a universe of uncertainty we have to make decisions on our best available data and heuristics.
It makes me extremely uncomfortable when people take these things as facts beyond a doubt and I think those who are willing to read the best data and arguments against what they think is likely true are the real heroes of the world today.
Reading intelligent people who disagree with you is also uncomfortable.
On that, we agree: decisions should be made based on facts and data, not on what we think we know. The quote at the top of the post, along with its introduction, gave me no sense that that was your intent.
+Jimmy Brokaw Beautifully put that is exactly the problem with our country.
+Adam Liss No, "number of crimes and convictions" does not have to indicate "legitimate imprisonment", but I don't think it necessarily does not indicate that either.
If you believe (as I tend to because it's almost always the case that causes of human behavior are complex) that there are a multitude of causes of increased violent crime, the argument you're presenting doesn't seem very strong.
I don't hold this silly-but-simple-to-use-as-illustrative view, but say your prior is that exposure to animated cartoons is part of what leads to higher crime and conviction rates. Then those graphs at Wikipedia are exactly what you'd expect.
I'm no expert on incarceration (nor am I super interested in doing a bunch of research on a Sunday afternoon), so I'd definitely like to have someone give me concrete arguments and data about where my link goes wrong instead of just asking me to toe the line.
+Dustin Wyatt Libertarians are the only ones who think it's about victimless crimes.
Any liberal worth their salt will tell you that crime, first and foremost, is about social inequality.
And it will also be clear as day that the form of punishment the US incarceration system offers will do nothing at all to reduce crime.
Libertarians and conservatives are both wrong. But conservatives are most wrong.
+Andreas Geisler I'm not sure what any of that has to do with the price of tea in China. I mean, if you think its interesting to argue about which team is the best, more power to you, but I don't find it interesting at all.
Like…I'm on your side here, but it makes me cringe to be so.
+Dustin Wyatt You cringe at actual science?
+Andreas Geisler But you haven't posted any? I mean, the comment you posted was nothing but "libertarians are like this, and conservatives are like that, but us liberals are the best".
+Dustin Wyatt Crime is about inequality. That's a scientific finding.
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DEC/Resources/Crime%26Inequality.pdf
Punitive incarceration fails to reduce crime. That's another scientific finding
http://www.salve.edu/sites/default/files/filesfield/documents/Incarceration_and_Recidivism.pdf
You know, unlike the OP, which, once again, is just a comments page, devoid of any kind of argument or analysis.
>You know, unlike the OP, which, once again, is just a comments page, devoid of any kind of argument or analysis.
I already addressed this above. I'm not sure why you bring it up.
This comment of yours is the first comment I think you've made in this thread that wasn't "rah, rah, my side is best, boo to you for not thoughtlessly supporting it".
Anyway, I already agree with both of your points.
+Dustin Wyatt Kling didn't write the page you linked to, and it contained nothing of any particular merit. I daresay it was a mistake to link to that instead of what you were actually referring to, but as you conceded that, peace be upon it.
Now, a claim that people are in prison because there is a lot of crime is … not interesting in any way.
Unless you were expecting that the judges are all corrupt, or that the prosecutors are all inept (and corrupt), that finding is not at all surprising.
Even if it were the case that people are put in prison through blatantly false accusations, the result would be the same, unless the legal system somehow didn't even bother faking the records. Not that I think there's a large amount of directly false accusations, I am just pointing out that the finding would be the same, unless the system documented its own corruption.
Discussing whether mass incarceration is acceptable without discussing whether the strategies employed are fit for purpose, or what the causes of the crime are … strikes me as dishonest.
The claim isn't that people are in prison because there is a lot of crime, but that people are in prison because of a lot of violent crime. It's a common trope that some large percent of prisoners are in there because they were non-violent offenders.
+Dustin Wyatt wrote:
"No, 'number of crimes and convictions' does not have to indicate 'legitimate imprisonment', but I don't think it necessarily does not indicate that either."
No, it doesn't have to. But it does, according to data that's readily available. I'm not going to argue against a strawman.
https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offenses.jsp
"If you believe (as I tend to…) that there are a multitude of causes of increased violent crime, the argument you're presenting doesn't seem very strong."
Except that your "belief" does not reflect the facts: both violent and property crimes have been steadily decreasing since the early 1990s, as you can see for yourself with a few clicks.
Again, your argument would be logically valid if it reflected reality.
It doesn't.
We're done.
+Adam Liss​I wasn't saying you were necessarily wrong, but that the argument you presented at the time wasn't strong.
Now that you've presented data to back up your argument it becomes stronger.
Sorry. I assumed you were familiar with the facts, and that your argument took reality into account. My mistake.
+Adam Liss Oh, I see where you're coming from now. You're responding to my use of the worse "increased". The word "increased" was a copy/paste editing error or something. I didn't mean that violent crimes were increasing as that's really immaterial to what I was saying. (And I'm fairly sure I've posted statistics illustrating the decreasing violent crime in the USA here on G+ some time over the years.)
The sentence you quoted should be if I hadn't messed it up.
"If you believe (as I tend to…) that there are a multitude of causes of violent crime, the argument you're presenting doesn't seem very strong."
The "increasing" part didnt really have anything to do with the point anyway.
The data presented in the original article seems to indicate that whatever the trend, the level of violent crime in the USA is commensurate with the level of incarceration if you believe that some percent of the violent criminals just have to be kept away from the general populace and some percent of the violent criminals are being taught better. (I'm not arguing that either of those is accurate here)
Now, it doesn't look like the level of incarceration has changed to match the decreasing level of violent crime and that's a problem, but AFAICT it's certainly plausible that if the level of incarceration had changed to match the trend lines of violent crime, that the level of "legitimate" incarceration would still be much higher than elsewhere if violent crime levels…decreasing they may be…are still higher.
Again, thats not to argue that incarceration is the best way to handle violent criminals. Nor is it to argue that it isn't the best way.
What I find really interesting here is that of all the posts in this comment thread no one has said something like:
So, in that article there's this stat and this argument that are wrong because of this stat and this argument.
I mean, I get the feeling that no one commenting has actually read the original article at all or at the least without sitting there with their blood boiling at the outrage of someone having the opposing viewpoint.
It's all just arguments zooming past each other in the night.
I can make an argument for any position with various data and win the tribe with my eloquent rhetoric. And maybe that's enough, but it doesn't sit right with me.
An incorrect, but winning, argument doesn't even have to be eloquent rhetoric. You can just not use all available data. You can knowingly or unknowingly make subtle logical errors or appeal to subtle biases.
There's more arguments for more positions that sound good but have subtle logical errors than there are arguments with solid backing.
As far as I know, the best way to hone the knives edge of your argument is to directly incorporate rebuttals for the points of the opposing argument within your argument.
Even better, incorporate the steel-manned version of your opponents argument within yours.
It's not anyones responsibility to convince (that's not exactly the right word, because as I've mentioned, I already vote for less incarceration and think we over-incarcerate with maybe 80% confidence) me with good faith argumentation. And I certainly don't believe crackpot theories need directly addressed. But…it's not apparent to me that the original article was full of lies either.
+Dustin Wyatt Why would anyone need to attack the findings in the article?
The findings are irrelevant, because it's not looking at the correct problem.
As I pointed out, only libertarians might be dismayed to see no particular impact from "victimless crimes". Everybody else who is opposed to the massive amount of incarceration is arguing from these kinds of things:
1) The tool is the wrong kind : social safety nets and free education are the best crime-prevention.
2) The way prisons are being run do nothing to rehabilitate prisoners, which is why they re-offend so often.
+Andreas Geisler Yes, those are accurate reflections of the liberal position and the opinions I hold.
A person would engage with the article if they were interested in accurate information and they found the information incorrect.
A person might say:
I disagree with the article because while it says X, Y, and Z, it draws the conclusion A from that data. That conclusion is flawed because of this argument Q.
Instead we get a rehashing of the standard liberal position that everyone already knows.
Anyway, I don't see this conversation going anywhere constructive now…
+Dustin Wyatt I don't think the article is even relevant.
Who cares whether the inmates have committed violent crimes if we also know how to
1) make them stop
and
2) make sure others don't follow their example?
The only thing one might try to claim with that article is some kind of lame fear-mongering that "libruls want to let loose monsters" or "poor people are in jail because they're eeevul". I don't think anyone bothered to engage with those, because they're so transparent.
So your claim is that we know how to do 1 and 2?
+Dustin Wyatt Um, yes.
I believe you call it the "standard liberal position".
1) Prisons focused on rehabilitation, not incapacitation.
2) Proper education, proper health care, proper social programs, proper wages.
Alright, now you're making good posts ITT!
I'm not so sure your points are actual answers to my question though. They're descriptions of the state we want to be in, not descriptions of how to get to that state.
It's like if I were to ask "How can we make everyone rich?" and your response was "easy, just give everyone lots of money!"
I just don't know and I AFAIK, "we" ("we" as in humanity/science) don't know, how to get from where we are, as described by the stats and articles like the one I posted to where we should be.
Can we effectively transition today's prison population to the system liberals want? Keep in mind, that (IIRC) taking just our currently incarcerated murderers and rapists we'd still have a higher incarcerated population per-capita than western european countries.
I totally agree that that is a problem of our own making and that a large part of that stems from our culture of incarceration, but thats not a description of what we do from here.
+Dustin Wyatt prison reform and social reforms?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfEsz812Q1I
Social reforms are a longer stretch, you've dug a deep trench, there.
But I don't see why gradual improvement, starting with children (well-funded schools, free lunches, ample after-school activity offers) wouldn't work.