re: "But Denmark, Finland and Norway are all much more similar to Norway in their rehabilitative approach than to the United States" -- typo, you meant but Denmark, Finland and Sweden, no?
I'm in Sweden. To the extent we know how to rehabilitate criminals, what we know how to do is how to rehabilitate ethnic Swedes. (And not all of them). If you would like to re-join the ranks of the law-abiding, we actually know how to instill better habits in you, and make space for you in our society, once you have repented and we can see that the repentance is sincere. This doesn't work for rehabilitating gang members, actual neo-nazis, or jihadists. You cannot rehabilitate people who at are war with society itself, or are sociopaths. This ought to be obvious to everybody, but for some reason isn't.
Of course maybe they’d still be triggered by women’s rights or a country that does not have a law code so closely based on a narrow interpretation of Muslim law. Ie unreplicable outside SA
We have people studying this, but it seems to be essential for all rehabilitation for there to be a larger society for them to integrate back into. And that's not the case here. Not only do we have a shortage of dedicated Islamic scholars who are able to argue them out of jihadism, but out in the larger Islamic society here there are always plenty of jihadists who will try to suck them right back in again. Which is the same problem with certain criminal gang memberships. And they cannot integrate into a non-Islamic society at all. So it is very frustrating.
As surprising as it sounds to some people, prisons work. We really don’t know how to rehabilitate our most dangerous criminals, nor how to keep impulsive youths from starting down that path. So prison and effective policing are the most effective solution for the foreseeable future.
Yes, that is likely true in many cases. I think there is also quite a lot of naïveté on how effective rehabilitation is. But given that the proponents of rehabilitation do not change their mind when confronted with the actual facts, then “arguing in bad faith” is the most plausible answer.
Do you buy the claim that incarceration has an after-effect of making people more likely to commit crimes once they’re released? Ie via increased connections to criminals, decreased employment opportunities, disruption of social contacts etc
Also - where do you think probation/community supervision fits in?
Suppose that we had more humane means than prisons to incapacitate criminals. Think of 24-hour electronic surveillance of convicts. We probably would be more willing to use these methods than to send people to prison, so we might reduce crime by more, no?
Maybe so, but I don't think I would want to invite the panopticon to engage in 24 hour surveillance of certain people. Better to keep that camel's nose out of the tent.
In a way, that suggests that executing the extreme tail reoffenders is probably the best plan. 0% recidivism, but very little chance that "Execution after 5 individual grand theft auto convictions" gets applied to "Execution after 5 mean tweets".
As an academic criminologist, I largely agree with the data presented here. My main source of disagreement is that even though it seems that incapacitation *should* work, the empirical track record is more muddled. The authors cite some supportive studies but many others are less promising. General incapacitation would work almost by definition, but would involve such increases in imprisonment that it would involve lots of “false positives”—incapacitating many people for longer than needed. The US already incapacitates more people than other developed countries (though this difference is not as dramatic when you control for crime levels and demographics), and it is hard to see much appetite for substantially increasing the amount of imprisonment. This has large social costs, even if they are somewhat exaggerated by the left. Selective incapacitation is the goal, getting the benefit of incapacitating high frequency offenders without as many false positives. But selective incapacitation is really challenging because it is difficult to predict *who* is going to be the high frequency offender based on risk profiles. (It’s easier in retrospect—Monday morning QBing!)
I teach my students that the simple truth is that we don’t really know how to reduce crime substantially, either through *liberal* solutions such as rehabilitation or *conservative* solutions like deterrence/incapacitation. Crime rates changing over time is largely unrelated to CJ system changes. Eg, changes to routine activities (eg, fewer people out of public to get mugged, increased use of security devices), decreased lead exposure, increased abortions, all probably have more to do with the substantial US crime decline from 1990s to today (more than cut in half!) than anything the CJ system did.
I'm not sure what you are proposing. If incarceration were the key driver of lower crime or recidivism, you’d expect the U.S. to outperform the Nordics, which clearly isn’t the case. Nordic countries achieve low crime rates with less incarceration while focusing on prevention and rehabilitation. The U.S. also has massively higher homicide rates compared to the Nordics despite relying heavily on incarceration. I’m not saying the U.S. needs to emulate this, but the comparison seems inaccurate. Systemic social factors, like inequality or access to firearms, likely play a larger role in crime control than simply increasing prison sentences.
> “If incarceration were the key driver of lower crime or recidivism, you’d expect the U.S. to outperform the Nordics”
This would only be true if the incarceration rate was the only difference between Norway and the US
> “Nordic countries achieve low crime rates with less incarceration while focusing on prevention and rehabilitation”
The author’s point is that Norway’s low recidivism is attributable to other causes, as Norway’s low recidivism predated the reforms. It logically can’t be attributed to the reforms.
> “The U.S. also has massively higher homicide rates compared to the Nordics despite relying heavily on incarceration”
The cross-sectional comparison here does not tell us much about the causal effects of prisons. An important question is: Would US crime rates be higher or lower if we selectively increased incarceration (all else constant)? Probably lower!
This line of reasoning is far more appropriate than: Which countries have high incarceration and how do their crime rates compare? This would be the wrong question because there are tons of other differences between countries.
> “Systemic social factors, like inequality or access to firearms, likely play a larger role in crime control than simply increasing prison sentences”
The author is not claiming that prisons have the largest effects on crime rates (relative to other factors). It’s very likely that other variables have larger effects. Can those variables be easily/cheaply/constitutionally targeted by policy interventions? Not always.
One thing I'd add is that cross-sectional evidence is highly prone (even more than usual) to being misleading in cases where one variable is a deliberate response to the other (feedback).
For example, statins are drugs commonly used by people to prevent strokes, but strokes are more common among people who use statins. Obviously this does not mean that statins cause stroke, or even that they don't reduce stroke probability.
It's due to the underlying health conditions that the statins are used in the first place and, even if they do help, they are not miracle drugs that make one as healthy as a person who never needed the drugs in the first place.
Similarly, incarceration is a response to crime. So there is nothing surprising about high crime and high incarceration rates co-occurring, even for people who believe that incarceration causally reduces crime.
Other factors than incarceration clearly contribute to the high American homicide rate. But, as you note, what matters is whether crime would be lower or higher in a counter-factual where the incarceration rate was changed and all else held equal.
Don't worry! We released 30K criminals under the First Step Act six years ago, didn't contact any of the victims first, and now the total amount that were re-incarcerated from that group is.............."A Number We Are Waiting To Get Back".... according to Colette Peters, Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Prison is so expensive, I wonder what the effects of punishments with less deadweight loss like caning etc have on crime.
Though it does seem like there is a lot of wishful thinking regarding repeat offenders and rehabilitation, my sister in law is against prisons and I’ve always found that very strange.
re: "But Denmark, Finland and Norway are all much more similar to Norway in their rehabilitative approach than to the United States" -- typo, you meant but Denmark, Finland and Sweden, no?
I'm in Sweden. To the extent we know how to rehabilitate criminals, what we know how to do is how to rehabilitate ethnic Swedes. (And not all of them). If you would like to re-join the ranks of the law-abiding, we actually know how to instill better habits in you, and make space for you in our society, once you have repented and we can see that the repentance is sincere. This doesn't work for rehabilitating gang members, actual neo-nazis, or jihadists. You cannot rehabilitate people who at are war with society itself, or are sociopaths. This ought to be obvious to everybody, but for some reason isn't.
Yes, thanks.
I think Saudi Arabia is pretty decent at rehabilitating jihadists and turning them into more moderate Muslims.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Care_Rehabilitation_Center
Of course maybe they’d still be triggered by women’s rights or a country that does not have a law code so closely based on a narrow interpretation of Muslim law. Ie unreplicable outside SA
We have people studying this, but it seems to be essential for all rehabilitation for there to be a larger society for them to integrate back into. And that's not the case here. Not only do we have a shortage of dedicated Islamic scholars who are able to argue them out of jihadism, but out in the larger Islamic society here there are always plenty of jihadists who will try to suck them right back in again. Which is the same problem with certain criminal gang memberships. And they cannot integrate into a non-Islamic society at all. So it is very frustrating.
As surprising as it sounds to some people, prisons work. We really don’t know how to rehabilitate our most dangerous criminals, nor how to keep impulsive youths from starting down that path. So prison and effective policing are the most effective solution for the foreseeable future.
I don't believe that anyone sincerely doubts that prisons work. I think those people are just arguing in bad faith.
Yes, that is likely true in many cases. I think there is also quite a lot of naïveté on how effective rehabilitation is. But given that the proponents of rehabilitation do not change their mind when confronted with the actual facts, then “arguing in bad faith” is the most plausible answer.
Do you buy the claim that incarceration has an after-effect of making people more likely to commit crimes once they’re released? Ie via increased connections to criminals, decreased employment opportunities, disruption of social contacts etc
Also - where do you think probation/community supervision fits in?
Suppose that we had more humane means than prisons to incapacitate criminals. Think of 24-hour electronic surveillance of convicts. We probably would be more willing to use these methods than to send people to prison, so we might reduce crime by more, no?
Maybe so, but I don't think I would want to invite the panopticon to engage in 24 hour surveillance of certain people. Better to keep that camel's nose out of the tent.
exactly. crime would be redefined, and not in a good way
In a way, that suggests that executing the extreme tail reoffenders is probably the best plan. 0% recidivism, but very little chance that "Execution after 5 individual grand theft auto convictions" gets applied to "Execution after 5 mean tweets".
As an academic criminologist, I largely agree with the data presented here. My main source of disagreement is that even though it seems that incapacitation *should* work, the empirical track record is more muddled. The authors cite some supportive studies but many others are less promising. General incapacitation would work almost by definition, but would involve such increases in imprisonment that it would involve lots of “false positives”—incapacitating many people for longer than needed. The US already incapacitates more people than other developed countries (though this difference is not as dramatic when you control for crime levels and demographics), and it is hard to see much appetite for substantially increasing the amount of imprisonment. This has large social costs, even if they are somewhat exaggerated by the left. Selective incapacitation is the goal, getting the benefit of incapacitating high frequency offenders without as many false positives. But selective incapacitation is really challenging because it is difficult to predict *who* is going to be the high frequency offender based on risk profiles. (It’s easier in retrospect—Monday morning QBing!)
I teach my students that the simple truth is that we don’t really know how to reduce crime substantially, either through *liberal* solutions such as rehabilitation or *conservative* solutions like deterrence/incapacitation. Crime rates changing over time is largely unrelated to CJ system changes. Eg, changes to routine activities (eg, fewer people out of public to get mugged, increased use of security devices), decreased lead exposure, increased abortions, all probably have more to do with the substantial US crime decline from 1990s to today (more than cut in half!) than anything the CJ system did.
How about bringing back corporal punishment instead?
> “ A simple suggestion would be to greatly increase likelihood and length of incarceration as a function of previous offenses.”
How would your proposal be different from, for example, the famous 3-strikes law in California?
I don't think it would be. The 3 strikes would be great if it was actually enforced.
I'm not sure what you are proposing. If incarceration were the key driver of lower crime or recidivism, you’d expect the U.S. to outperform the Nordics, which clearly isn’t the case. Nordic countries achieve low crime rates with less incarceration while focusing on prevention and rehabilitation. The U.S. also has massively higher homicide rates compared to the Nordics despite relying heavily on incarceration. I’m not saying the U.S. needs to emulate this, but the comparison seems inaccurate. Systemic social factors, like inequality or access to firearms, likely play a larger role in crime control than simply increasing prison sentences.
> “If incarceration were the key driver of lower crime or recidivism, you’d expect the U.S. to outperform the Nordics”
This would only be true if the incarceration rate was the only difference between Norway and the US
> “Nordic countries achieve low crime rates with less incarceration while focusing on prevention and rehabilitation”
The author’s point is that Norway’s low recidivism is attributable to other causes, as Norway’s low recidivism predated the reforms. It logically can’t be attributed to the reforms.
> “The U.S. also has massively higher homicide rates compared to the Nordics despite relying heavily on incarceration”
The cross-sectional comparison here does not tell us much about the causal effects of prisons. An important question is: Would US crime rates be higher or lower if we selectively increased incarceration (all else constant)? Probably lower!
This line of reasoning is far more appropriate than: Which countries have high incarceration and how do their crime rates compare? This would be the wrong question because there are tons of other differences between countries.
> “Systemic social factors, like inequality or access to firearms, likely play a larger role in crime control than simply increasing prison sentences”
The author is not claiming that prisons have the largest effects on crime rates (relative to other factors). It’s very likely that other variables have larger effects. Can those variables be easily/cheaply/constitutionally targeted by policy interventions? Not always.
Exactly right on every point.
One thing I'd add is that cross-sectional evidence is highly prone (even more than usual) to being misleading in cases where one variable is a deliberate response to the other (feedback).
For example, statins are drugs commonly used by people to prevent strokes, but strokes are more common among people who use statins. Obviously this does not mean that statins cause stroke, or even that they don't reduce stroke probability.
It's due to the underlying health conditions that the statins are used in the first place and, even if they do help, they are not miracle drugs that make one as healthy as a person who never needed the drugs in the first place.
Similarly, incarceration is a response to crime. So there is nothing surprising about high crime and high incarceration rates co-occurring, even for people who believe that incarceration causally reduces crime.
Other factors than incarceration clearly contribute to the high American homicide rate. But, as you note, what matters is whether crime would be lower or higher in a counter-factual where the incarceration rate was changed and all else held equal.
Don’t you mean repeated convictions, not arrests?
Interesting article, thanks. What are your thoughts on "Broken Window" policing and the "three strikes and your out" laws in the US?
Don't worry! We released 30K criminals under the First Step Act six years ago, didn't contact any of the victims first, and now the total amount that were re-incarcerated from that group is.............."A Number We Are Waiting To Get Back".... according to Colette Peters, Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWCGdy5iwK8&ab_channel=BlazeTV
The country is in the best of hands.
Autistic utilitarian mode on: Prisons are too much of a burden on society. For the 30th arrest, incineration, not incarceration.
Prison is so expensive, I wonder what the effects of punishments with less deadweight loss like caning etc have on crime.
Though it does seem like there is a lot of wishful thinking regarding repeat offenders and rehabilitation, my sister in law is against prisons and I’ve always found that very strange.