[HN Gopher] America's incarceration rate is in decline
___________________________________________________________________
America's incarceration rate is in decline
Author : paulpauper
Score : 55 points
Date : 2025-06-25 17:14 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
| gjdoslhx wrote:
| https://archive.is/pe7eH
| pengaru wrote:
| 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?
| outside1234 wrote:
| This turned out to not actually be a thing:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/business/organized-shopli...
| arduanika wrote:
| pengaru did not say anything about organized shoplifting. The
| lock and key were definitely a thing, and still are. Please
| read comments before responding to them.
| pengaru wrote:
| Come visit SF and let's go shopping downtown.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| It's unclear if the decline in prisoners stems from a decline
| in crime. While I generally believe the statistics that
| _violent_ crime has decreased, it may be the case that the
| judicial system and even the government in general just have no
| enthusiasm for prosecuting or punishing it.
|
| In short, no, they won't stop locking it up. They wouldn't even
| if there was a decline in petty crime... those locks are so
| that they can staff the store with 2 people instead of 5.
| pengaru wrote:
| > those locks are so that they can staff the store with 2
| people instead of 5.
|
| Maybe in some cases that's true, but it's definitely not true
| for the few big box stores I frequent in SF where this
| practice occurs. The Target on 4th street has significantly
| more staff running around constantly unlocking things and
| tending to this sort of b.s. than they would otherwise. I'm
| not sure who pays for the tactical gear wearing security
| guards at the entrance looking ready for Iraq, but it can't
| be cheap.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > The Target on 4th street has significantly more staff
| running around constantly unlocking things and tending to
| this sort of b.s. than they would otherwise.
|
| Are you certain, or were they running 3 people ragged who
| will burn out in a month and quit? Constant motion can make
| it seem like there are more people, but I also remember the
| 1990s and seeing at least one person per department in a
| Kmart, some just monitoring their area. A bigbox store like
| Target would've had 2 people for the cash registers up
| front, at least one in customer service, and one per
| department during off-peak hours. If you're telling me
| you're seeing a dozen people for certain, I'll believe you,
| but I am wondering if it wasn't actually fewer.
|
| And besides all that, I was thinking more along the lines
| of CVS and Walgreens, which are the stores I know of
| locking everything behind glass.
| antonymoose wrote:
| I live in a deep Red Bible thumping, back the blue, law and
| order county / state.
|
| About 7 years ago a former schoolmate of mine shot a man 6
| times over a bad drug deal, fled the state to California. He
| was captured by the US Marshal and brought back to the county
| jail where he bonded out after 3 month.
|
| After his bonding out, he drove over to the victim's parent's
| house and performed a drive-by shooting, injuring none but
| did kill livestock.
|
| He was arrested again, taken to the county jail, and bonded
| out after several months.
|
| The issue finally reached a plea bargain, they dropped all
| charges related to both shooting, had him plead guilty to
| felony firearms charge, and gave him time served and 5 years
| probation.
|
| This man is a grown adult with felony priors, and got a
| proverbial slap on the wrist. Never saw a day of state
| prison, likely never will.
|
| If this is how we treat serious violent crime, I'm not
| surprised in TFA at all.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| There should be statutory limitations for prosecutors
| concerning the use of plea deals. No more than 1% of cases
| in any calendar year should be permitted to even offer plea
| deals, so that they use that tool sparingly and only when
| appropriate. If they waste it out of laziness or apathy,
| then the subsequent cases that year would have to be
| brought to trial.
|
| This would cut down on alot of the bullshit (and not just
| for cases like the one you describe, but where plea
| bargaining is used to bully people into pleading guilty
| where they are not).
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| Most convictions are due to plea deals. If you limit that
| tool, people would simply have charges dropped due to
| Sixth Amendment violations and people languishing in
| prison awaiting trials. It would be gridlock.
|
| "Plea bargaining accounts for almost 98 percent of
| federal convictions and 95 percent of state convictions
| in the United States."
|
| https://legalknowledgebase.com/what-percentage-of-
| criminal-c...
| analog31 wrote:
| I think a public trial serves as a form of oversight.
| Widespread plea bargaining means we'll never know how
| many of these people even committed crimes, much less how
| the justice system operates.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| I live in super liberal Illinois, which recently ended cash
| bail. It was a rough transition period but now it is fully
| implemented and every judge and prosecutor knows how
| everything works.
|
| Cook County Jail (Chicago and close-in suburbs) population
| is higher than it has been in over a decade. They had to
| reopen a section of the jail to deal with it. Because
| people who do what that guy did no longer get to bond out.
| If someone fled to California and got brought back by the
| Marshal's service, he's sitting in jail until trial. And
| _he_ is the one that needs to negotiate and offer
| concessions.
|
| Note: crime is now dropping a lot [1]. Trying setting the
| date range to "last 28 days"
|
| [1] https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/sites/vrd/home.html
| techjamie wrote:
| Asset Protection manager here. Our protection decisions are
| based on theft trends independent from our staffing. And
| generally, the theft scales with how much business a store
| receives, rather than how many staff they employ.
|
| More staff won't solve theft significantly because thieves
| carry the target merchandise to a less securely monitored
| area of the store. If they see an employee in an aisle,
| they'll move down another aisle where there isn't. And you
| can't have a person everywhere.
|
| If anything, putting something behind glass increases staff
| because we have to keep that area covered as much as possible
| so we get those sales.
| mauvehaus wrote:
| From the end of World War II until the mid-1970s, the proportion
| of Americans in prison each year never exceeded 120 per 100,000
|
| That's a funny way of saying 0.12%. Is there a reason for this?
| It sure doesn't make it easy to compare the numbers they're
| giving with other numbers given as percentages.
|
| I guess if you're considering a sufficiently small population you
| could go from ~600,000 people in Vermont * 120/100,000 -> ~720
| imprisoned people in Vermont trivially, but we're the second
| smallest state. This certainly doesn't scale to cities over a
| million. At least I'd start having to think harder about it.
| WorkerBee28474 wrote:
| > 120 per 100,000 ... Is there a reason for this?
|
| Crime statistics (e.g. homicides) are often quoted as 'n per
| 100,000 population'.
|
| It's probably also easier for mental math, e.g. here's a city
| with 1 million population, that's 10 100Ks, so 1200 people in
| prison.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| It also lets you abstract away or compare to stats that are
| scaled to population but might not be 1:1 with a person, e.g.
| "thefts per 100,000 population per year" where one person
| might either commit or be the victim of multiple thefts in a
| year.
| everforward wrote:
| 120 per 100,000 includes significant digits. 0.12% could be
| anywhere from 120-124 per 100,000. You'd really want 0.120%,
| but that's confusing for different reasons.
|
| Worse would be 1,000 per 100,000, which is 1% but there's no
| way to tell that it's not rounded or truncated.
| ninthcat wrote:
| "120" and "0.12%" both have 2 significant digits. "120." and
| "0.120%" have 3 significant digits.
| everforward wrote:
| I would presume, perhaps incorrectly, that "120 per
| 100,000" has 3 significant digits and "12 per 10,000" has
| 2.
|
| I've never seen a period used like that in census data. It
| seems like a conscious choice because the period is
| confusing when used in the middle of a phrase. 12E1 makes
| more sense but is abnormal notation for many people.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Significant_figures
|
| > Trailing zeros in an integer may or may not be
| significant, depending on the measurement or reporting
| resolution.
|
| 120 is either two or three significant figures, and you
| can't know which without knowing how the number was
| arrived at.
| outside1234 wrote:
| Crime is also way down over the last 20 years:
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/24/what-the-...
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Because of those tough on crime republicans.
|
| Lets see if cutting education has any impact over the next 20
| years.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Crime reduction is strongly correlated with an aging
| population. Crime is largely a young man's game.
| WalterBright wrote:
| At least in Seattle, crime is "way down" because many
| businesses have stopped reporting it, because the police don't
| respond to less serious crimes anymore.
|
| A shopkeeper friend of mine closed his business in Seattle
| after multiple lootings of his place and the police never
| showing up. He relocated to a bedroom community.
|
| Crime statistics are not necessarily accurate, and politicians
| have an interest in minimizing those statistics one way or
| another.
| tptacek wrote:
| This is why the headline statistic for crime tracking is
| usually homicide, which is also down.
| amelius wrote:
| Yes, they all got pardoned or deported.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Detention facilities for deportations is an inherently fast
| shrinking population.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| at some point, maybe. i have no trust in DHS whatsoever.
| pessimizer wrote:
| But do you think they'd start letting more people into the
| country, just to charge to detain and deport them? It's
| actually sort of an ideal solution. Big business gets back
| labor that it can threaten to deport if it demands
| anything, then they can clean up on the public-private
| deportations. Factory managers could send ICE a list of
| their most annoying employees to visit. It would be so
| 80's, I almost typed "the INS."
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| what you're describing is more or less already happening.
| don't think h1b visaholders won't become a target.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| You think if an H1B is canceled that they would illegally
| overstay?
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > i don't expect they'll just eat the losses of declining
| populations in their main moneymakers
|
| Most of them (probably all) have contracts that stipulate they
| get paid per bed they provide, whether or not it's occupied.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| sure, but if the beds are empty, they're less likely to get
| new contracts.
| strict9 wrote:
| > _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 2009 or so. Average age of parents is
| increasing. Teen pregnancy on a long and rapid decline.
|
| All of these working together means that each year the act of
| having a child is much more deliberate and the parents likely
| having more resources. Which in turn should mean fewer youth
| delinquency, which as the article notes is how most in prison
| started out.
| bluGill wrote:
| > 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 (kids is only 15), and if the kids goes to
| college may have some dependency on you when your peers are
| retiring. Plus if your kids have kids young as well as you, you
| be around and have some energy for grandkids.
|
| Don't read the above as advocating having kids too young, it is
| not. However don't wait until you think it is the perfect time.
| If you are 25 you should be seriously thinking in the next 2
| years, and by 30 have them (if of course kids are right for you
| - that is a complex consideration I'm not going to get into).
| Do not let fear of how much it will cost or desire for more
| resources first stop you from having kids when you are still
| young enough to do well.
| c22 wrote:
| I had kids in my late 30s and they tested my patience and
| emotional regulation to an extent greater than any other
| experience of my life. I was somewhat emotionally volatile in
| my 20s and I can't imagine my kids having better outcomes if
| I'd had to learn to parent at that time in my life.
| wvenable wrote:
| My children are 12 years apart in age and being a parent in
| my 20s was a much better experience. I had less money, but
| I had more time. I wiser now, but I had more energy. I
| could relate to being a kid more.
|
| I'm not suggesting it's better. But people seem to
| automatically assume that being older when having kids as
| better. I know some much older parents who were not good
| parents. I know I would not make a good parent to a younger
| child now that I'm in my 40s.
| anyfoo wrote:
| I did not have more time in my 20s. In my 20s and early
| 30s, I was busy "getting out there". Building my life, my
| interests, my foundation (not just my career). Now I have
| a happy life to stand on, and can devote more time,
| attention, and energy to my family.
|
| I don't deny that your way can work out as well. But OPs
| advice was "get children before you are 30, don't wait
| until after". Whereas my honest advice, based on my
| experience, is "wait until you are 35, you'll be much
| more stable life in several regards".
|
| Which approach is best for you depends on a lot of
| things. For me, I can honestly say, there is no way I
| would be where I am if I had had kids in my 20s or even
| early 30s, and I also wouldn't have been as good a father
| as I am right now based on how I've grown since then.
| Both things that my child directly benefits from.
| wvenable wrote:
| I was "getting out there" too! So many major life
| milestones. But actually it has never stopped. Most of my
| major career changes happened after the second child. I
| have entirely new interests now.
|
| I feel like I do have the unique perspective having
| actually done both. I don't need to assume what kind of
| parent I was in my 20s because I was that parent. And I'm
| a different parent now. But being a younger parent was a
| great experience despite any other consequences.
| anyfoo wrote:
| That's interesting. Because I genuinely feel I'm much
| better cut out to be a parent now. Is it the different
| for you? I have so much patience and understanding, and I
| see that lacking in many of the younger parents around
| me. I see them and I remember myself.
|
| And the life I have would just not have been possible if
| I had a child back then. Not even if I completely
| sacrificed family time and attention back then, which I
| never wouldn't have wanted.
| anyfoo wrote:
| We _did_ wait for the "perfect" time, and are very happy we
| did.
|
| I got my son at almost 40, and I'm positive I'm a much better
| parent because of that. Sure, kids cost energy, but at 40 and
| 50 you're not geriatric. I often get the opportunity to
| compare our parenting style to younger parents, and it's
| clear that they often have some emotional growing up to do
| themselves. They complain about normal parenting things that
| we just shrug about, they are torn between their career and
| raising a kid, and most importantly they often lack patience,
| where to us it just comes natural.
| Izikiel43 wrote:
| > but at 40 and 50 you're not geriatric.
|
| biologically, and for pregnancy, yes you are.
| anyfoo wrote:
| I didn't say get pregnant at 50. I said I became a parent
| at almost 40, my wife is a couple of years younger. No
| problems whatsoever, and I seem to have more energy for
| parenting (and especially patience) than the parents in
| their 20s who haven't even found themselves yet.
| malcolmgreaves wrote:
| It's actually the age of the egg that matters most, not
| the age of the mother during pregnancy.
| pamelafox wrote:
| 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 kids at the same age.
|
| It was really nice that I had time to establish my career and
| figure things out before having kids.
| Swizec wrote:
| [delayed]
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Obviously I think the answer to this question depends so much
| on individual circumstances that all any of us can do is
| offer anecdotes. I think that while energy levels do decline
| as you get older, the degree of the decline depends largely
| on how much you stay in shape. My partner and I are very
| active and find ourselves only marginally less physically
| energetic in our 30s as our 20s. I've seen friends of ours
| with more sedentary lifestyles having a much sharper decline.
| If you're inclined to stay in shape then I don't think age
| makes as big of a difference (within reason.) But YMMV.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| 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 around 40 years from the last of the high-lead children.
| 17 years ago is the late 2000s.
|
| [1]
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10406...
|
| [2] https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/EHP7932
|
| [3]
| https://kagi.com/assistant/d2c6fdd5-73dd-4952-ae40-1f36aef1e...
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| Can we blame lead for the US' electoral landscape too?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Can we blame lead for the US' electoral landscape too?_
|
| More of a pet theory, but voters born between 1950 and
| 1980, boomers and Gen X, have had a well-documented set of
| policy preferences.
| ivape wrote:
| What if I told you voters born between nnnn-yyyy had a
| set of policy preferences?
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| There's supposedly a cycle of attitude between
| generations. If your parents are X, you want to be Y. If
| your parents are Y, you want to be Z. If your parents are
| Z, you want to be X
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| No. You can't blame lead. There is zero justification for
| making the average person less responsible for their own
| worldview and choices in leadership.
| aaomidi wrote:
| And abortion access.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Probably not. That played out in the last wave of crime
| reduction.
| throwaway_2121 wrote:
| Lack of boredom is also a factor.
|
| https://macleans.ca/society/the-real-reason-crime-is-
| falling...
| kovek wrote:
| This is interesting. I don't know why it's happening. However,
| this book deserves a mention:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Natur... .
| It shares statistics on how violence has been decreasing
| throughout the history of humanity.
| reverendsteveii wrote:
| as a followup to that (excellent) book, here's Barry Glassner -
| A Culture of Fear. The Better Angels of Our Nature talks about
| how violence has always been declining. A Culture of Fear talks
| about how the rate of that decline has been increasing since
| the 90s but people actually perceive things as becoming more
| dangerous rather than less, and attempts to come up with an
| answer as to why that may be the case.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| The most obvious answer is large-scale media. I can learn
| about a shooting on the other side of the country within
| hours of it happening, and think "that could happen where I
| am". Likewise with any other news, which by definition is
| about out-of-the-ordinary events. There's more news about
| violence because there's more news, not because there's more
| violence, but it _feels_ like there 's more violence.
| spogbiper wrote:
| "if it bleeds, it leads" is (or was, i'm old) a common
| saying regarding the news media. It may be that there is
| more news that scares us because scaring us is profitable
| watwut wrote:
| 20 century features pretty much largest genocides ever.
| Multiple of them. And in addition, things that we do not count
| as genocides, but still involved deliberate killing of
| millions.
|
| That particular book was criticized by historians a lot.
| rawgabbit wrote:
| This is good news. The level of crime and number of offenders has
| decreased.
|
| Quotes from the article: > As of 2016--the
| most recent year for which data are available--the average man in
| state prison had been arrested nine times, was currently
| incarcerated for his sixth time, and was serving a 16-year
| sentence. > But starting in the late 1960s, a
| multidecade crime wave swelled in America, and an unprecedented
| number of adolescents and young adults were criminally active. In
| response, the anti-crime policies of most local, state, and
| federal governments became more and more draconian.
| > Rapidly declining numbers of youth are committing crimes,
| getting arrested, and being incarcerated.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > Rapidly declining numbers of youth
|
| May be the result of a rapidly declining birth rate.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| _Rapidly declining numbers of youth are committing crimes,
| getting arrested, and being incarcerated_
|
| Well also, the number one crime these youths were getting
| arrested for was drug possession. With drug trafficking being
| second. 15 years ago the vast majority of people in prison in
| texas were there for drug possession or trafficking. If all of
| a sudden everyone's drug of choice is marijuana, and it's being
| decriminalized everywhere, I have to think that makes it hard
| to get the numbers you used to get in terms of arrests.
|
| Not that this is a bad thing. I'm just pointing out that while
| arrests did go down, I don't necessarily believe that the
| prevalence of pot smoking decreased.
|
| One benefit is that this new environment should help them to
| have better futures than the youths that came before them.
| TrainedMonkey wrote:
| Like all complex phenomena 1960s crime wave probably has many
| causes, but lead poisoning stands out -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis
| ivape wrote:
| Drugs. Don't overthink things.
| rwmj wrote:
| The question not even asked by the article is ... why?
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| The answer is likely unknowable, but I can think of several
| factors that tie into the plummeting birth rate:
|
| - While the Freakanomics citation of widespread access to
| abortion has been debunked as a sole cause, I think it remains
| credible for at least a contributing factor. Fewer young people
| born to folks who are too poor/busy/not wanting to raise them
| is doubtlessly going to reduce the number of young offenders
| who become the prison system's regular customers their whole
| lives.
|
| - Beyond just abortion, contraceptives and contraceptive
| education have gotten much more accessible. For all the endless
| whining from the right about putting condoms on cucumbers
| poisoning children's minds with vegetable-based erotica, as it
| turns out, teens have sex, as they probably have since time
| immemorial, and if you teach them how to do it safely and don't
| threaten their safety if they do, they generally will do it
| safely.
|
| - Additionally, there has been a gradual ramp-up in how badly
| negative outcomes stack in life, and "messing up" on your path
| to adulthood carries higher costs than it ever has. Possibly
| contradicting myself, teens are having less sex than ever, as
| all broad forms of socializing have decreased apart from social
| media, which is exploding but doesn't really present
| opportunities to bone down. Add to it, young people are more
| _monitored_ than they 've ever been. When I was coming up, I
| had hours alone to myself to do whatever I wanted, largely
| wherever I wanted as long as I could get there and my parents
| knew (though they couldn't verify where I was). Now we have a
| variety of apps for digitally stalking your kids, and that's
| not even going into the mess of extracurricular activities,
| after school events, classes, study sessions, sports, etc. that
| modern kids get. They barely have any unmonitored time anymore.
|
| - Another point: alternative sexuality (or the lack thereof) is
| more accepted than it's ever been by mainstream society, and
| anything that isn't man + woman is virtually guaranteed to not
| create unwanted pregnancy unless something truly interesting
| happens.
|
| - Lastly, I would cite that even if you have a heterosexual
| couple who is interested in having kids, that's harder than
| ever. A ton of folks my age can't even afford a home, let alone
| one suitable for starting a family. The ones that do start
| families live either in or uncomfortably close to poverty, and
| usually in one or another variety of insecurity. The ones that
| can afford it often choose not to for... I mean there's so many
| reasons bringing kids into the world right now feels
| unappealing. It's a ton of work that's saddled onto 2 people in
| a categorically a-historic way, in an economy where two full
| time salaries is basically mandatory if you want to have a
| halfway decent standard of living, and double that for one that
| includes children. That's not even going into the broader state
| of the world, how awful the dating market is especially for
| women, so many reasons and factors.
|
| Any stressed animal population stops reproduction first. I
| don't see why we'd think people would be any different.
| 123yawaworht456 wrote:
| >how awful the dating market is especially for women
|
| "World Ends, Women Most Affected."
| standardUser wrote:
| From what I've read, mostly sentencing reform and less
| aggressive drug prosecution/more drug diversion. That and the
| general trend for crime to recede in wealthy, stable societies.
| pjdesno wrote:
| 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%)
| casenmgreen wrote:
| 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 possible theory at the moment. It's
| not proven, of course, but the other theories which were given
| have been found lacking. This is the only theory which has some
| evidence, and hasn't been found to be wrong.
| mystified5016 wrote:
| I'd wager that the foster system is a huge factor. Poverty is
| likely the rest.
|
| When you don't give a human resources, they will find a way to
| take it. When you force humans with no resources to have kids,
| well...
| gosub100 wrote:
| Why abortion and not contraceptives?
| wil421 wrote:
| They probably aren't using them.
| iknowstuff wrote:
| Why not both
| gosub100 wrote:
| one can be prevented by the other
| bdangubic wrote:
| not prevented... (trust me :)) but best we can do!!
| y-curious wrote:
| Women's contraceptives in the states require a prescription.
| Which requires a doctor's appointment + insurance. If you are
| poor or live with strict parents (ironically), you are much
| less likely to seek them out.
|
| Condoms are their own bag of worms. I think there are
| cultural differences in condom use here, as well as the same
| problem with them being a cost. This doesn't even touch on
| men being shady with stealthing and pressure.
|
| On the other hand, the abortion clinic requires only an
| appointment and a way to get there.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| In the 1980s, condoms were "behind the counter" things you
| had to ask for and suffer the critical eye of the pharmacy
| worker (at least in small town USA).
|
| It's no wonder we had so many teen pregnancies.
| wvenable wrote:
| Maybe people who are bad at pre-planning are also potentially
| poor parents.
| yesbut wrote:
| That correlation has pretty much been debunked.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalized_abortion_and_crime...
| jjcob wrote:
| I doubt there is a single explanation. I think it's multiple
| factors.
|
| Unleaded gasoline could also be a factor. Every country has
| shown drops in crime rates when leaded gasoline was phased out.
|
| If I recall, leaded gasoline was phased out in the 80ies, which
| fits a drop in crime rates in the 90ies.
| leptons wrote:
| Availability of pornography has cut down the rate of rapes
| significantly. Too bad the republicans are going to try to
| ban all porn pretty soon, according to their stated agenda.
| They do love their wealthy donors that run the prison-
| industrial-complex.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| A lot of the current drop has decriminalization of drugs as
| a contributing factor. Same principle.
| krunck wrote:
| Yes but I'd say reduction of lead use in general.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| And lead paint.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis
| Izkata wrote:
| The drop in crime also correlates very well with releases of
| popular violent video games:
| http://www.gamerdad.com/blog/2008/04/08/downard-spiral/
| deadbabe wrote:
| There are many reasons why crime is in decline, but ultimately
| its economic.
|
| Crime _used_ to pay. Your expected return on a crime was pretty
| good for the risk involved. Nowadays though, because of
| technology, risk has increased while the returns have also
| decreased. Barriers to entry for crimes worth committing are now
| way higher. Robbing a gas station decades ago could yield a nice
| chunk of cash that could probably pay bills for a month. But now
| with less people using cash and cost of living increasing,
| there's no point. Most registers have pitiful amount of cash. And
| mugging strangers on the street is likely even worse. No one
| carries wads of cash anymore.
|
| The hot industry to be in is ransomware. The sums are vast and
| the risk is low if you do it right. But it's very white collar,
| it requires skills that your typical low level criminal won't
| have.
|
| Overall, it means there's a lot of crimes that are done not for
| any financial reason, just for personal satisfaction.
| permo-w wrote:
| not forgetting that CCTV is absolutely ubiquitous and high def,
| where previously it was reasonably rare and low quality
| deadbabe wrote:
| And most young people would rather have social media that
| lets them easily be tracked than staying anonymous for the
| purposes of committing crimes.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Even if you leave your phone at home to create an alibi for
| yourself, it is very likely that CCTVs will see you enroute
| to the crime scene, if not at the crime scene itself.
| Between businesses with cameras, front door cameras on
| houses, and traffic cameras, it's very difficult to travel
| anywhere without leaving a trace that investigators can
| pick up after the fact if they're sufficiently motivated.
| holmesworcester wrote:
| How much of this is due to smartphones? The years seem to line
| up.
|
| 2014 seemed like the big year where smartphone ubiquity changed
| US teen culture. Less boredom, dumb adventure, drinking, etc.
| (For better or worse but in this case better.)
| y-curious wrote:
| Devils advocate: smartphones have made antisocial tiktok
| trends, "fast money" hacks and paint an unrealistic portrait of
| success. Before, only rappers could be young and rich and
| flashy. Now, seemingly regular teens are millionaires and this
| is constantly fed into young people's feeds.
| kiernanmcgowan wrote:
| > After peaking at just more than 1.6 million Americans in 2009
|
| > But a prison is a portrait of what happened five, 10, and 20
| years ago.
|
| Is this just a result of the dropping crime rates since the mid
| 90s, but on a 20ish year lag?
| Jtsummers wrote:
| That's what the article goes on to describe, yes. Declining
| crime rates mean fewer new prisoners, but high recidivism rates
| plus long sentences means many old prisoners are still in
| prison. As those old prisoners die off or for whatever reason
| don't commit more crimes after release, the total population
| declines.
| standardUser wrote:
| Mandatory minimum sentences can be 10, 15 or 20 years depending
| on the quantity of drug and other factors. Often just for
| possession. The US spent several decades filling our prisons
| with people using those sentences, and we still do, just not as
| aggressively.
| oceansky wrote:
| Bad news for prison owners
| egypturnash wrote:
| GOOD
| kazinator wrote:
| In part due to simple demographics?
|
| If most prisoners are younger, starting their incarceration
| incidents in their teens or twenties, then basically the fewer
| young people you have, the less people in prison:
|
| https://populationeducation.org/u-s-population-pyramids-over...
|
| Compare 1960 to 2020.
| standardUser wrote:
| They fail to mention the reason the prison population soared in
| the 70's and 80's, because of ultra-harsh prison sentencing for
| drugs. In retrospect, those laws appear to have been deliberately
| designed to create a massive and permanent prison population, far
| beyond what locking people up only for non-consensual crimes
| could ever sustain.
|
| Now, most of those laws have been rolled back. In the past 10-15
| years the number of people locked up at the state level for drug
| crimes is down 30% even though drug arrests remain high. And
| those still getting locked up are getting shorter sentences.
| (though over 40% of inmates at the federal level are still there
| for drugs)
|
| I'm not sure why they failed to mention such a key issues related
| to incarceration. They repeatedly refer to the surge in crime in
| the drug war era as a "crime wave". And they link to 3 other pro-
| drug war articles by the same author. Maybe Keith Humphreys had a
| bad trip in his youth and now he's making it everyone's problem.
| viktorcode wrote:
| In the light of that dynamic I fund it curious that Russian
| prisons population is rapidly declining too, but for very
| different reason.
| low_tech_love wrote:
| You might be half joking, but your hypothesis is interesting to
| show how many different reasons can exist for the same
| phenomenon. Lots of people here talking about lead, for
| whatever reason, but also decriminalisation of drugs, abortion,
| etc. Most are logical explanations, even if contradictory. Very
| nice to see how we need to be super aware of statistics; we can
| force the numbers to say anything we want.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| 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 convicted.
| saulpw wrote:
| Marijuana possession was the number one crime and is now legal
| in a majority of states. This seems like the high-order bit.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| ^ This. The drug war was an attempt for conservatives to
| punish poor people for using a harmless drug (marijuana) to
| help cope with systemic inequality, and kids for wanting to
| have fun.
|
| From 1950-1970, America introduced new mandatory minimums for
| possession of marijuana. First-time offenses carried a
| minimum of 2-10 yrs in prison and a fine of up to $20,000.
| They repealed these minimums in 1970 because it did jack shit
| to stop people smoking. The govt even recommended
| decriminalizing marijuana _in 1970_ , but Nixon rejected it.
|
| But then came The Parents. As fucking usual, parents
| "concerned for their children" began a years-long lobbying
| and marketing effort to convince the public _any_ kind of
| drug was evil and harming kids. Through the 1980s their
| lobbying spread to all corners of the government, influencing
| messaging and policy. So finally in 1986, Reagan introduced
| new mandatory minimums for marijuana, based on amount. Having
| 100 marijuana plants was the same crime as 100 grams of
| heroin. And then they went further; if you we caught with
| marijuana _three times_ , you got a life sentence. Life. For
| pot. In 1989, Bush Sr. officially declared the "new" War on
| Drugs. And we've all been paying for it ever since.
| tptacek wrote:
| At what point in the last 30 years did cannabis possession
| account for even a plurality of incarcerated persons, in any
| state or federally?
|
| Cannabis is not the high order bit.
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