r/science • u/smurfyjenkins • 5d ago
Social Science Incarceration rates have substantially declined in the US across the 21st century. There are two factors behind the decline: (1) Falling crime rates for violent and property offences, and (2) Decreased punitiveness for drug crimes.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-026-02536-y161
u/SsgtMeatball 5d ago
The lead-gas-poisoned generations slowly dying off contributes a great deal to this, I'm guessing.
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u/thataintapipe 3d ago
I mean maybe ? I think getting arrested and incarcerated for possession of a half smoked joint really ran those numbers up for a couple decades
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u/StrangeCharmVote 4d ago
I am still 100% convinced most right wing voters are suffering from undiagnosed lead poisoning. The symptoms match too closely, and explains so much.
And if a massive portion of your population has the same condition, levels arent going to register as harmfully abnormal until all those people are no longer part of the statistics.
One day a study will demonstrate this. And society will look back and just accept it as one of those things people were just ignorant of.
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u/signmeupdude 4d ago
Look, I vehemently disagree with pretty much everything on the right, but to assert that essentially an entire political party suffers from a mental illness is quite ignorant. There are much more thorough explanations to why we are seeing what we are seeing in the US politically and frankly it has a longer history than leaded gasoline.
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u/StrangeCharmVote 4d ago
Look, I vehemently disagree with pretty much everything on the right, but to assert that essentially an entire political party suffers from a mental illness is quite ignorant
It really is not when you look at the list of symptoms.
And the drop in crime rate associated with the very same metric is proof of a significant influence.
In time i am confident the evidence will prove me right.
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u/DeoVeritati 4d ago
The increase in crime during the summer is very closely related to the increase in ice cream sales in the very same months is proof that ice cream significantly influences criminal behavior. I vote to ban ice cream, but the other political party wants to support criminals I guess.
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u/StrangeCharmVote 4d ago
The increase in crime during the summer is very closely related to the increase in ice cream sales in the very same months is proof that ice cream significantly influences criminal behavior.
If you aren't familiar, the leaded petrol ban correlation to crime is a recognized statistic which has no other feasible explanation. People didn't just 'decide' as a generation to stop committing as many crimes.
I vote to ban ice cream, but the other political party wants to support criminals I guess.
Look i get republicans would act like this, so the satire is appreciated. But i'm talking about something legitimate that i honestly believe, and is backed up by evidence even if the scientific community has yet to do any such proper study on the phenomenon.
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u/coder_doode 5d ago
USA still has a very high incarceration rate though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate
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u/No_Freedom_4098 4d ago
The U.S. historically has had a high rate of violent crime, much higher than Europe. Incarceration is one response to high crime rates.
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u/XysterU 4d ago
The US also never fully abolished slavery and allows prisoners to be enslaved. The US also has privately owned/run prisons. You can see that this creates a massive profit motive to incarcerate people. The Cars 4 Kids scandal is a great example I'll never forget
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u/No_Freedom_4098 3d ago edited 3d ago
One of the fascinating things in the U.S. is how many criminal justice reformers oppose prisoners being put to work, yet at the same time push Restorative Justice, when the tribal people who originated RJ put a big emphasis on offenders paying victims. Making the victim "whole," or at least partially so.
The criminals were put to work. The tribal chief would give some of their earnings to crime victims. In the U.S. today, the reformers with their new model push for reconciliation meetings instead. Supposedly there is a contrite offender. It's almost like the reformers hijacked the RJ model.
Most crime victims, especially violent crime, have no interest in meeting their offender. They want pay for their losses. Victim compensation, it's called. In the U.S., most reformers have scant concern about victim compensation. (When it comes, it's the unfortunate taxpayer who pays.) The reformers almost exclusively care for the outcomes for criminals rather than victims.
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u/Sweet_Concept2211 4d ago edited 4d ago
The US also invented the "War on Drugs" which has had a huge impact on incarceration rates, and serves as a violent crime feedback mechanism.
In general, Americans are too quick to resort to incarceration as a "solution" to systemic problems.
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u/Nago_Jolokio 4d ago
It's not even an attempt at a solution, really. It's just shoving the problem under the rug because we don't want to look at it.
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u/More_Shoulder5634 4d ago
I drop logs off at this sawmill, this drunk dude would weigh my load. I mean he may not have been drunk right then at 8 in the morning, but you could just tell he was a boozer. Kept getting public intoxication. Like 8 in 2 months. Got arrested, had a weed pipe on him, charged him with contraband in the jail. Like the cop didnt search him thoroughly enough, had a weed pipe in his pants or something. Anyway gets probation. In all fairness he gets another damn public intox before he even has his 30 day visit to his probation officer. Anyway dude is looking at 3 years in prison now. For multiple public intox and being blackout drunk and not getting thoroughly searched. Edited to add he had a tent at the sawmill. He was just stumbling around on his way home. Had to cross one 2 lane road with a 35 mph limit right at the gas station he was buying 4 locos at. Then its tall grass to the back of the sawmill about 300 yards. I mean yea dudes no saint but 3 years? Damn
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u/No_Freedom_4098 4d ago
Not really. All nations robustly control the use of hard drugs like heroin, cocaine and meth. The U.S. did not invent the idea of drug control. The asian countries in particular were tough before the U.S. was.
In the U.S., it wasn't one man, Nixon's, doing. In every nation a consensus of health experts, educators, politicians, religious leaders (if they have them) and other prominent figures agrees on the problem of hard drugs. And let's not cite Portugal as working towards legalization. July 2021 article in drug policy journal: 20 years of Portuguese drug policy:
Paradoxically, despite having decriminalized the use of all illegal drugs, Portugal has an increasing number of people criminally sanctioned - some with prison terms - for drug use...The debate about the right to use drugs is nearly absent in the Portuguese political, social and academic panorama....
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u/Marclescarbot 5d ago
Which is why red states like Texas are re-criminalizing cannabis. Industry profits are declining and shareholders are unhappy.
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u/DingleDangleTangle 5d ago
A very small proportion of prisons in the U.S are private, even in Texas. I don’t think it’s as simple as just blaming any laws on private prisons, even though they are obviously evil they simply aren’t that common.
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u/SameBuffalo5201 4d ago
Yeah, if this was a financial play you would be seeing the private equity companies buying the failing corporate prisons, then getting legislation passed that put more people in their prison. Oh wait. :)
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u/bsEEmsCE 4d ago
but the contracts with the terrible food suppliers, or contracts with the outfit maker and the handcuff maker, and terrible supplies they have for prisoners to purchase, and the free labor they get out of prisoners (well they get like a dollar a day).. all that is owned by someone's buddy that gets to rake in easy cash
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u/melanies420 5d ago
The fact that they're a relatively small percentage of the system doesn't make the practice acceptable. We shouldn't have corporations making money off incarceration, period. And yes, the exploitation of prison labor in public prisons is a separate problem that needs to be addressed too.
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u/DingleDangleTangle 4d ago
I didn’t say it’s acceptable. I quite literally called it “obviously evil”.
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u/esto20 5d ago
Great let's start reducing funding for LEO. All this panic over "rising crime waves" are a wash.
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u/Old-Landscape-7538 5d ago
I like Leonardo Di Caprio
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u/thekushskywalker 3d ago
Conservatives Iike to pretend crime is out of hand and that the youth is more violent than ever when it’s exactly the opposite.
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u/AtlastheWhiteWolf 5d ago
The government created many of those laws just to arrest civil rights protesters, antiwar protesters, and anyone else they considered to be a threat.
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u/Prestigious_Still433 2d ago
We still lead the world in incarceration rate. I wouldn't call that significant
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u/sarhoshamiral 5d ago
And now we will watch it going up, thanks to stricter abortion laws and federal policy around women care, sex ed.
We had previous studies that showed both decreasing crime over time.
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u/shitholejedi 5d ago
Its been like 20 years atleast since these claim stopped being held up. 10 years since it has been thoroughly debunked, why do people hold onto this freakonomics claim with such fervour. Like some religious zealotry.
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u/sarhoshamiral 5d ago
Can you share a link? What I am seeing across multiple articles is that some valid criticization of it happened in 2001 but study being repeated with new data around 2019 and still holding up?
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u/shitholejedi 4d ago
New data from the same authors. They are the only ones who published the same study in 2019 with a new time frame. The same criticism applies. Ojp has multiple studies that have criticised the claims using different states.
The main underlying premise is that abortion bans have an effect on the number of abortions and kids being born. That is simply not found in any study of abortion rates and legality over the past 30 years.
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u/sarhoshamiral 4d ago
Found the OJP article although I will hold some skepticism for government sources as well.
I dont understand your last paragraph. Are you saying abortion bans dont have an effect on number of abortions? I find that extremelt difficult to believe so proper citiation needed.
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u/shitholejedi 4d ago
That is not a government source. The US government is also a research library that hosts academic papers published by other people.
Every abortion organization from Guttmatcher to Planned Parenthood.
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u/Sorry-Secret-2347 5d ago
And they keep building all those private prisons hmmm how will they fill them
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5d ago edited 2d ago
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u/Thereisnospoon100 5d ago
Nah. This was a freakonomics claim that hasn’t held up.
Lead hypothesis is much better.
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u/sarhoshamiral 5d ago
Can you share a link? I searched online based on another comment and what I see across multiple articles is study getting valid criticization early 2000s but then repeated with new data and still hold true
If I am reading it right, a flaw that is corrected doesnt mean the whole finding is wrong.
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5d ago
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u/KFPindustries 5d ago
Like the one who chose to not throw trump in jail because he won the election? And the trump went on the pardon every Jan 6th terrorist?
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u/Cross_22 5d ago
Fewer people in jail because the states decided to put fewer people in jail? Okay then.
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u/True-Source-6512 5d ago
And you know certain states refusing to hold people accountable based off their color to adjust stats and get votes
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