The Washington Post reports that fiscal restraints may be leading some states to reverse the trend toward ever higher rates of incarceration. What logic and proportion cannot do, the lack of money can sometimes accomplish. It seems that it is very expensive to incarcerate people, and there does come a point at which even politicians eager to appear tough on crime have to accept the fiscal facts of life.
Matthew Yglesias, at the Atlantic, had this to say:
We do over-imprison people in the United States, so from a humanitarian point of view this is nice to see. On the other hand, it’s also true that the crime rate in the United States remains at what I’d consider an unacceptably high level and there are some indications that it’s on the rise again.
Measuring crime, and computing crime rates, appears to be a tricky business, and I wonder whether we can draw many meaningful conclusions from crime rates. In a recent post I complained about the “home invasion” scare, and the seeming exaggeration of one “home invasion” in the New Haven Independent. I made the point that we already have laws on the book that cover the subject, and we don’t need another one. One commenter pointed out that the one person arrested immediately after that incident was charged with:
# First-degree kidnapping
# First-degree burglary
# First-degree robbery
# First-degree larceny
# First-degree unlawful restraint
# First-degree reckless endangerment
# Second-degree conspiracy to commit assault
# First-degree conspiracy to commit kidnapping
# First-degree conspiracy to commit unlawful restraint
That’s 8 crimes for a single incident. If we pass a law against “home invasion” that would make nine in similar circumstances. When the crime rate is computed, is this one incident counted as one crime or eight? To the victim it certainly must have felt like a single incident. The Wikipedia article to which I’ve linked above notes:
The calculation of crime rates uses data that is obtained either from criminal justice systems or from public surveys. Comparisons between the two types of data are problematic, and so are comparisons using the same type of data between different jurisdictions. The United Nations publishes international reports of both Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice, and Crime Victim Surveys
The reported rate of crime here in the states is, I believe, higher than in other countries, but it seems to me that one would have to be very careful before concluding that the actual crime rate is much different. One would have to control for variables such as multiple charges. Another factor, of course, is the number of crimes. We here in the states seem to feel that we should criminalize everything we don’t like. Some countries are more rational. In addition, at least by some measures a crime doesn’t occur until there is an arrest. If you start arresting for crimes to which you once turned a blind eye, then the crime rate goes up, though behavior hasn’t changed. If other countries in the Western World are more tolerant of victimless crimes then their crime rates will be lower.
I can’t prove any of this, of course. Nonetheless I do suspect that crime rates fluctuate not only because of a real rise in the number of crimes, or in rates of incarceration, but in response to political events or changes in attitudes. We have more people in jail in this country not, necessarily, because we have more criminals, but because it has suited the interests of politicians to put them there. We may very well have a higher crime rate for the same reason. Fear appears to sell in this country. Before there was terrorism there was crime in the streets, and it’s still a useful political diversion. Just ask Jodi Rell.
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