Comment by grey-area | Hacker News Reader

Comment by grey-area | Hacker News Reader

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You should try looking at prison differently. It's incredibly expensive to lock someone up for their life - that's four walls, meals, space to exercise and guards for say another 40 years. We shouldn't spend that unless the alternative would cost a lot more (say violence against another person, a person's life).

he woke two vacationing golfers as he entered the room and stole a wallet, then pretended to be a security guard and ran away

Crime is often impulsive, irrational. Now this guy had poor impulse control and started from a difficult position in life. He then did stupid things like petty crime. The loss to these golfers was probably $100 - balance that against the cost to society of a life in prison. I disagree that's a worthwhile trade or is protecting society to any significant degree. It costs huge amounts of money, throws away a life that could be turned around, results in disproportionate and inhumane punishments, and doesn't even help the victims. This is little better than deportation for stealing an apple.

The US has 1.6 million of its population in jail, and that figure rose very rapidly in the last few decades, probably due to laws like this and jailing people for minor drugs offences, I'm not convinced that has saved US society any money or even made it much safer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...

U.S. violent crime rates have plummeted in part because of higher incarceration. A lot of people on this list don't remember when cities like New York and Washington, DC were very dangerous places and all native born inhabitants were leaving.

That's not true. Take Sweden for example. Violent crime has plummeted there as well, and they are closing prisons because they are putting _less_ people in jail.

Because of incarceration? Do you have any stats that prove that link?

"Changes in incarceration and crime are significantly related during the period under consideration. Increases in state prison committals per 100,000 residents tend to reduce crime the following year, whereas increases in the number of persons released from state prisons per 100,000 reidents tend to increase crime the next year."

The National Research Council's "Understanding Crime Trends Workshop Report," eds. Goldberger, A. and Rosenfield, R.

It's tricky to isolate other social trends in the research though. Steven Levitt did a major study of prison overcrowding legislation, which can suddenly change incarceration rates if the legislation is successful, but not if it fails, a bit of a coinflip not directly connected to social or demographic shifts. He found evidence of a link under these conditions.

Levitt, S. The effect of prison population size on crime rates: evidence from prison overcrowding litigation.

Obviously those aren't the only two studies on the subject, it's been a focus of criminology research since it's been a discipline. Levitt followed up with a good meta-analysis that covered ten different explanations for the reduction of crime over the last few decades:

Levitt, S. Understanding Why Crime Fell in the 1990s: Four Factors that Explain the Decline and Six that Do Not. Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2004. pp 163-190.

He cites John DiIulio (ie, DiiuLio) in that work. DiIulio has written a lot on the subject as well, usually arguing that incarceration rates have an impact on crime rates, but adding the nuance that three strikes laws rarely do much good.

Crime rates are very complex, and tied to many complex factors. Incarceration rate appears to be one such factor.

Put all the population in prison... and bingo all crime solve d

Incarceration has nothing to do with crime deterrent. Proper policing and better economy prevents crime. Correlation doesn't imply causation.

> all native born inhabitants were leaving.

What does that even mean?

He means people born in those cities were leaving?

It's even more viable to explain violent crime as being directly correlated with popular drug price. As the price of popular drugs rise, dealers have more incentive to maim and kill; as it falls, more reason to write off a small stash and focus on the next trick.

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2011/11/co...

Also because of lead control, vaccines, expansion of the earned income tax credit, the shift from the extroverted thrill-seeking 80s to the cocooning 2000s, and many other factors.

I've never seen evidence of a hard correlation between incarceration rate and crime rate, it sounds intuitive if you assume everyone has equal chances in life and has other options, but do you have figures?

If that were the case, the US, Cuba and Rwanda should be the safest countries in the world (all near the top in incarceration rates) and Sweden one of the worst. The opposite is true if you look at (for example) homicide rates. I'm not sure there is any evidence of even a good correlation between higher incarceration and lower crime.

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