Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Prison Populations: What is our societal problem
Rates in general seem to be growing disproportionately for one group. This is rate per 100,000 people so it is not incidence. If our society were in balance I would suspect we would see a flat line for all rates (more people equals more criminals but rate would stay the same). Starting in the 90’s there was the start of the war on drugs but it also seems that violent crimes increased. Is this the influence of 90’s rap (half kidding)? Or is our bi-modal (two Americas) society becoming further separated and leading to increased violence? What is our role as citizens knowing that the rate of criminality is increasing? dispo
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I have a busy day tomorrow before catching a bus back to Minnesota, so I'll be brief for now. First a couple questions:
ReplyDelete1-Where are these charts from? I just read Freakonomics (or listened to while driving home from Ryan's wedding), and in that he specifically talks about the drop in violent crime in the mid-90's. He spends a lot of time on the topic, so I'd double check that the figures are valid.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Impact_of_Legalized_Abortion_on_Crime
2-What do the numbers mean? Specifically, is that 8% of black adults, or 8% of adults in prison are black? Let me know if that needs clarifying.
3-What do you mean by bimodal? A larger divide between rich and poor, republicans and democrats, or something else?
Then a couple comments:
1-The war on drugs started before the 90's. Supposedly Nixon coined the term, but I specifically remember Nancy Reagan's role with the Just Say No campaign.
2-I'm not sure how easy it would be to find, but if it's possible to shed light on the prevalence of racial profiling by police could explain part of the divergence.
The figures are straight from the US Justice Dept. Bureau of Justice Statistics on Prisons (sorry for forgetting the source).
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/prisons.htm
8% of the black population. Like I said the they are rates. So for every 100,000 blacks 8% in prison. For every 100,000 whites <3% in prison.
Sorry, I forgot you don't listen to Bill Maher that much. Two Americas is phrase that is tossed around on the show a lot. The best example now is how people say the recession is over because the stock market is better yet blue collar job unemployment is still so high.
On the comments: A "just say no campaign" is not the same as having an administration target drug offenders (i.e., marijuana users which arrests jumped over 50% from 1980 to 1990's)
http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/node/53
2nd Comment: I don't know how to study racial profiling either except look at arrests vs. judicial rulings.
In general, I was hoping on comments about what our society should do that crime is so high besides stand back and say, "those are the bad people". I think our prison populations in general are a failing at some level of our society.
I was intending to get to comments on that. I just wanted to clarify a couple things first. One more clarification - is your question intended at general society (i.e. private citizens) or at how government should better approach the problem?
ReplyDeleteIn terms of private citizens, I'm sure there are a bunch of things I could list that I've heard should help (i.e. volunteering with at-risk youth), but have never really looked into the actual effectiveness, so I couldn't say for sure right now.
In terms of the government, I think a lot of the time they need to step back and actually look at the effectiveness of their programs and the results they entail. The Economist just had a good article last week on America's sex offender laws:
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14164614
In it, they argue that sex laws need to be revamped because a lot of the time they do more harm than good. The first example is a woman who is registered as a sex offender because as a 17 year old, she gave a boy who was 3 weeks shy of 16 a blow job at school. Is keeping an eye on her efficient use of government money? Assuming those are all the facts, I would say no. But legislators won't do that because they'd be torn to pieces in an election for being soft on crime (or likely worse allegations).
Though that might be tough to convey a similar argument on to violent crime, as by its nature, it's violent. That also makes me wonder if there were any changes in the classification of violent crime around that time. Sorry for the digression away from what you were looking for, I pretty much include any comments I think of that are even somewhat relevant.
While looking up the war on drugs last night, I noticed another argument against the government's efforts by Milton Friedman in which he made the point that by the government trying to reduce the supply, they're also increasing the price of drugs, and thus making it more profitable for those that remain in the business. I don't think it would be a stretch to say that increasing profits also increases appeal for people to get into the business. So perhaps legalizing and regulating some industries (such as marijuana) could also curtail illegal drugs. Just a thought.