Personally, I'd go even further. The very idea that prison is primarily about punishment (revenge by proxy?) instead of rehabilitation is wrongheaded.
The goal of any policy should be the betterment of society. We have plenty of evidence to show that prisons designed for rehabilitation have lower incidences of recidivism than harsh, punitive ones.
The recidivism rate in Sweden is 35%. Which means, that even with a rehabilitative-oriented system, you still have 1/3 of prisoners returning to jail. It does provide some substance to the claim that some criminals can't be rehabilitated, because even in one of the "best" systems, you still have a large number going back to prison.
Of course, the US recidivism rate is 67%, which is horrible, however it's very difficult to compare Sweden and the United States simply because you have some significant differences. It's difficult to assume that the only variable in play between the US and Nordic countries are simply the justice system.
First, you have a demographic differences. You also have significant differences in culture as well. In Sweden for example, single parent families are just 20% of all families with children. Yet in the US, 67% of all black families with children are single-parent, with 42% in the Latino community and overall a rate of over 30% for all families with children in the United States. In 1960, the overall rate was just 9%. I'm not arguing for or against single parent families, but there is a strong correlation between the likelihood of being arrested and the strength of the family unit. Here's an article that discusses it more, including research citations: http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2012/12/the-real-co...
Suggesting that the prison system is the primary cause of recidivism is to miss the point. We shouldn't be focusing on recidivism, we should be focusing on what gets people into prison in the first place.
This is a very good point. Sweden also has a very extensive safety net, so government will give you a home and enough money to live on if you can't get a job. While it's really expensive on the surface, it's an excellent crime deterrent: why risk doing crimes when you can just sit on your ass playing Xbox? A welfare mooch is much cheaper per year than a prisoner.
Sweden has a growing problem with crime in an immigrant population[1] that does not feel it is part of Swedish culture[2]. Soon, the Swedish will have the same governance problems as America stemming from a multicultural society.
That's not really the underlying cause. The US has a much higher (as in: an order of magnitude higher) incarceration rate than the Nordic (or some Central European) countries.
But the same cannot be said of crime rates. Crime rates in the US tend to be higher, but not nearly that much higher and not across the board.
What sets the US apart that leads to high incarceration rates is primarily harsh sentencing (longer sentences, fewer suspended sentences, high minimum sentences, a general focus on retribution over rehabilitation, the "felonization" [1] of everything under the sun).
[2] Yes, the book is a bit sensationalist, but there's plenty of truth to it. See, e.g. the Kiera Wilmot case [3]: What she did wouldn't have even risen to the level of a misdemeanor in most Western European countries.
It's worth noting that 7% of the US population commits 53% of the murders. Can you guess which demographic group that is? I'll give you a hint, it's not descended from Europeans. So even if you eliminated all the crime committed by European-descended Americans, America would still have a higher crime rate than European countries.
Europeans who criticize America often imagine it to be a country of European colonists. That's increasingly not true. European multiculturalists also expect that a person's cultural background will have zero influence on them. That is also not true.
There is no demographic group in the US as large as 7% that is not "descended from Europeans". If that is incorrect, then I need more hints, or perhaps you could be courageous enough to name it. We almost all have significant European ancestry, and every human is descended from Africans.
If you're being pedantic, it is true that African Americans have on average about 30% European genetic admixture. The facts presented are still quite striking, no?
So the lightbulb has appeared and you've acknowledged that "African Americans", like most Americans, are descended from both Europeans and Sub-Saharan Africans, and that there is no demographic group satisfying your initial description.
I think that data about crime rates related to different demographic groups is quite important. My purpose is not to be pedantic, although I do enjoy that, but to help clarify the thinking of those who might confuse this demographic data with outmoded and superstitious ideas about "race". I'm sure you're much too knowledgeable to fall into this trap, but there could be others, not as sophisticated as you, who might suffer from common misconceptions about genetics, race, and related issues.
87% of Americans are not descended from a recent Sub-Saharan African population (where recent is defined as within the last 80,000 years). African Americans form a genetically distinct American subpopulation with about 70-80% of genes from Africa. If you sent in spit samples to 23andMe from a white American and an African American, 23andMe would have no problem telling them apart. If race did not exist, this would not be possible.
It is interesting that crime rates and other social pathologies are so segregated by race in America. Different experts have different explanations for this. The point is, comparing America against Europe is hard to do when the racial makeup of the two countries is so different.
The legacy of slavery in America cannot be avoided. 14-24 year old African American males make up 1% of the USA population and commit 27% of the murders. Europe had no large scale agricultural African slavery in the 19th century, and its current society has evolved differently as a result.
I agree that government-defined racial categories are too broad and inexact. The true amount of human genetic diversity is far larger and far messier than five racial categories would suggest. Andrew Sullivan addressed the myth that "race is a social construct" on his blog[1].
Europe also didn't allow racism to prevent it from building a functional social safety net for the majority ethnicities. Or allow racism to propel a targetted drug war that has ghettoized inner city minority neighborhoods. Or allow racism to migrate most of the accumulated wealth of the country into newly constructed suburban jurisdictions with higher-quality subsidized public services, while employing public sector institutional finance mechanisms to deny investments to minorities. Or allow the tax and budget mechanisms to actively redistribute large quantities of wealth from cities where minorities are concentrated, to rural regions with almost no minorities. So there's that.
You've suddenly introduced a new concept: "recent". I don't see how it's relevant. A gene will encode the same protein regardless of when it was introduced into the genome.
"23andMe would have no problem telling them apart"
If someone you define as "black" marries someone you define as "white" and their child sends a sample to 23andMe, will the report say that the child is white or black? Remember, you claim they will have "no problem".
Andrew Sullivan, from the link you provided: '“race” is a social construct when we define it as “white”, “black,” “Asian” or, even more ludicrously, “Hispanic.”'
The "recent"-ness of common ancestry (or lack thereof) is what separates you from a Chimpanzee. 80,000 years of evolution matters, so you will find that peoples from Europe have many different genotypes and phenotypes from people in Africa (or any other part of the world, for that matter). For example, people in Europe have no incidence of sickle cell disease, a recessive genetic disease that in its heterozygous form grants resistance to malaria. Malaria is not prevalent in Europe, so such a mutation would confer no survival benefit to Europeans as it does in Africans. And indeed natural selection does work so we see no sickle cell disease in Europeans as we do in Africans. Lots of other traits vary across the world, too. Almost all Northern Europeans can digest milk as an adult while few Africans can. West Africa consistently has the fastest runners in the world [1].
It is not hard to take a listing of the single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in a persons DNA and compare them against a database of genetic sequences from various parts of the world to tell where they came from. The same mutation occurring in parallel in two different populations and persisting is rare enough that you can use SNP data to construct a phylogenetic tree of the human population (here is one I googled up[2]). We can tell interesting things from human population genetics, for example that Amerindians probably came from Asia, since the East Asians are there closest genetic cousins.
You should have a mixed-race friend send their spit into 23andMe and see what happens! When races mix, you have genetic admixture. It remains trivial to see which portions of a persons DNA comes from which part of the world because those portions contain SNPs which are only found in certain human subpopulations.
If you are the child of an African father and a European mother (like Barack Obama), you get half your chromosomes from your father and half from your mother. A few bits from each chromosome swap over, but it is not hard to unravel which bits came from Africa and which from Europe.
The government's big racial categories are somewhat inaccurate (especially hispanic, since some hispanics are European and some are Amerindian). But distinct human genetic populations are very real. Razib Khan's blog[3] is great if you want to move beyond the sound bytes and get into the real science of human population genetics. Sadly, liberal views on race tend to be extremely unscientific.
"The 'recent'-ness of common ancestry (or lack thereof) is what separates you from a Chimpanzee."
No, it's the composition of the species' genomes. If they were created in a lab yesterday the situation would be the same. Unless you believe in some kind of supernatural effect, the way homeopaths believe that water has "memory".
"we see no sickle cell disease in Europeans as we do in Africans"
There is sickle cell disease in southern Italy, and in many other parts of the world outside of Africa. It cuts across "racial" divisions, and follows the historical distribution of malaria.
You avoided the simple question about 23andMe. You claimed they would have "no problem" categorizing people as "white" or "black". So how would they categorize the child of a "white" and "black" parent?
Yes, but the US robbery rate is lower than in England, and the crime rates in many other categories are comparable [1] to what you find in the EU. Intentional homicides make up only a small fraction of all crime.
Crime tends to be more lethal in the US, not (that much) more frequent.
For various reasons, homicide is the easiest reported statistic to compare between countries. In any case, it's not robbery rates that drive the votes of scared suburbanites. Newspapers don't talk about which big city is the carjacking capital of the U.S.
No principal disagreement, but I am not sure how that relates to your original claim that "[h]omogenous countries with low levels of social dysfunction and high social cohesion have an easier time dealing with prisoners"?
The purpose of imprisonment, indeed, of the whole justice system, is to replace what would otherwise be mob justice. Of the various academic characteristics of the justice system: retribution, rehabilitation, deterrence, the former is arguably the most important one, or at least the one that most directly animates the existence of the justice system.
From that point of view, what is most relevant is peoples' perception of crime, and peoples' perception of the criminals, not necessarily actual crime rates. When people see sky-high murder rates, a crime that is considered the most grievous one possible and the kind of crime that becomes a focal point for the public discourse, and when they don't feel a social bond with the people convicted of crimes, they will not be satisfied by the kind of more lenient prison sentences and conditions you see in European countries.
The middle aged suburban voter is not interested in the rehabilitative aspect of the justice system, the aspect that reintegrates criminals into society, because that criminal was never part of that suburbanite's society to begin with. That voter is merely interested in retribution. At the same time, the criminal doesn't see the situation any differently. He has no faith in the institutions of society. He knows that he will never be considered a part of the broader society, so his incentive to really try to be rehabilitated vanishes. So the recidivism rate in the U.S. is double or triple that of places like Norway: http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/07/25/277771/norway-is....
Contrast Norway: http://blog.nj.com/perspective/2011/07/crime_and_punishment_... ("As Norwegians view it, if you’re going to better yourself within a collective society, then you must work within the collective. When it comes to crime, it’s not about the individual. It’s about what — as a society — they did wrong, and what they can correct, and how they can address this politically.")
Now, to circle back to my point: what creates these attitudes? Are Norwegians just better people than Americans? I don't think that's the case. I think the root of the difference is that Americans don't think of everyone as being part of the same collective. Partly because of cultural reasons, and partly because of historical reasons. The lack of homogeneity and social cohesion is a major part of what creates the attitudes. Segregation, in particular, has left an indelible imprint on modern American society. After all, much of the country was forcibly desegregated just two generations ago. To put it bluntly, when a black (or hispanic) kid in inner-Baltimore commits a crime, the white voters in suburban Maryland don't ask themselves, like the Norwegians do, "what did society do wrong? How can we correct the problem?"
I know that the kind of non-informative comment I'm about to make is rightly discouraged, but I really can't resist. This was a supremely insightful and well-written note, and I feel I understand some things better after reading it.
I agree with this analysis, but I also think that inclusiveness is malleable.
In "Song of Myself", Walt Whitman wrote "In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barleycorn less/and the good or bad I say of myself I say of them". The Parable of the Good Samaritan is all about how we choose our own levels of identification and some are more morally praiseworthy than others.
So yes, the problem might well be the lack of identification between your white voters in suburban Maryland and your black kid in inner-Baltimore (and vice versa of course), but we can and do change. Society moves forwards, and we are not entirely passive actors in it.
Let's make arguments that encourage greater identification, take social steps to increase identification, etc. It may well be easier for those societies in Europe, but it's by no means easy, which your analysis seems to ignore. These attitudes have to be worked on, and reinforced.
Well, if you're on the third strike, you might as well kill the witness instead let him go, as it does not increase your sentence, but decreases your chance of being caught.
Of course, it's not the law that's solely responsible for crazy high crime rates compared to other civilized countries, nevertheless some practices used in US legal system can give a lot of incentive to minor offenders to do things they otherwise wouldn't.
That sounds like a cop out. Not least because the problems mentioned here aren't so much with the prisoners but with the political system that criminalises common behaviour, the legal system that puts non dangerous offenders in prison and the cultural attitude that abuse is warranted.
Even if it isn't a cop out, it might be better taken as a suggestion for areas to target for improvement (social dysfunction, social cohesion) than as an excuse for complacency.
Go to the south side of Chicago and try to see what sorts of cultural ties exist between the people there and the people in the rest of the city. There is a profound disconnect, and a profound lack of any sense of connection to a common community.
Obviously Denmark or Norway have poor people. But the sense that one group of people are not even party to the same social contract is not one that is common in Europe, though you see it among Muslim immigrants in the UK and France.
Lack of faith in social institutions breeds crime. If you're a poor teenager in Chicago deciding whether to join a gang, you do it because the gang can protect you. The police won't protect you--the police are there to protect the rest of the city from you.
And it's not just a matter of decriminalizing common behavior. The young people in Chicago joining gangs aren't non-violent offenders being out away for innocuous crimes. That's what makes the problem so deeply intractable. Even when you take away the overly long sentences and the convictions for innocuous things like mere drug possession, the US has far more crime than Denmark or Norway.
Europe is going to see it too, soon. Below replacement fertility has meant increasing immigration, faster than those people can be integrated. And then Europe too will have to deal with the "us versus them" mentality that arises in such populations.
Denmark 24.8
Norway 25
Germany 27
E.U. 30.7
India 36.8
World 39
Nigeria 43.7
United States 45
Mozambique 45.6
The biggest underlying problem with the US prison (educational, healthcare, etc.) system is that the US economic system is actively maintained to increase the concentration of wealth and the degree to which Americans don't share a common set of interests.
But, still, such broader social problems aren't the only big problems in the prison or other systems, and even though they need to be fixed, there are big steps that can be taken short of fixing them to deal with other real problems in each of those systems.
> And it's not just a matter of decriminalizing common behavior.
Ending drug prohibition would do quite a lot of to mitigate the problem with prisons, even though it wouldn't deal with the biggest underlying problem.
> The young people in Chicago joining gangs aren't non-violent offenders being out away for innocuous crimes.
No, but there'd be a lot less broken homes for them to come from if it weren't lots of resources being poored into non-violent offenders being put away for victimless crimes, and there'd be a lot more resources for the kinds of interventions that would stop people from ending up in gangs in the first places.
> That's what makes the problem so deeply intractable.
What makes the problem deeply intractable is people throwing up their hands and saying that the problem is too hard to deal with. (And, mostly, people seeing their own short-term self-interest being in not dealing with the problem.)
"Go to the south side of Chicago"... That makes me laugh, I now live near Guadalajara, Mexico and it's safer here, even with cartel violence, than in Chicago.
My first reaction, as someone who loves the city and lived there for several years, was: don't let the statistics dissuade you from visiting; the areas on the north side where you would go are quite safe. And therein is the problem, isn't it.
I believe it has been shown that for similar cities, the U.S. system is worse - I think I saw an example of an U.S. and a Canadian city across the border, similar demographics, the U.S. one had 10 times the crime rate, etc..
The goal of any policy should be the betterment of society. We have plenty of evidence to show that prisons designed for rehabilitation have lower incidences of recidivism than harsh, punitive ones.