If only we had Poland’s crime rate.

And in fairness it became the topic here…so guarded apologies for shifting subjects. it is now the topic, that is increased incarceration means less crime in the USA. It did, it does.

“I am not quite sure what you are saying here. I was saying only that higher incarceration rates necessarily reduced criminality and that higher incarceration rates in 80s than in 60s meant that it’s hard to compare system of 60s to 80s and declare: “see, system was ok all the time”.”

We can exactly compare the incarceration rates, and we don’t even need to compare the ethno crime rates. The ethno in question is on the rate of violent crime, nonpareil. No other ethno even comes close. See Wichita Horror. Or White Girl Bleed a lot.

There is almost no non-elite person in the USA who lives even near those ethnos who has not been a victim of crime or their family members have been a victim of crime of said ethnos. Murder, rape, robbery — it’s entertainment. It’s called ‘the weekend’. This isn’t a secret over here, just unspeakable ground truth. Call it our version of Communism.

Now it’s a workable problem, but it requires force and incarceration.

Or Bad Uncle. Bad uncle is fine, it’s time to close the account.

I am not quite sure what you are saying here. I was saying only that higher incarceration rates necessarily reduced criminality and that higher incarceration rates in 80s than in 60s meant that it’s hard to compare system of 60s to 80s and declare: “see, system was ok all the time”.

If you are trying to say that certain populations have differential risk and that, say, Poles (my ethnos) can be expected to have, so to say, “base criminality” higher than, say, Swiss, then this is not I was discussing at all and it’s absurdly wrong of you to conclude anything about whether I think that this is either true, or false — because, once again, that was not the topic here.

The Incarceration rates are dropping and crime is actually exploding, and Goober is incorrect that this is a small blip. It’s a blip in the Pearl Harbor air raid sense. > It is only a small blip if you count over a year, instead of decades. The last crime wave lasted from the mid 60s to the mid 90s, and only finally broke because of mass incarceration and kill offs of the criminals.
I quite remember those days. NYC is currently ‘reeling’ under 447 homicides because it doesn’t remember a good straight 2000-2500 killings year that began in the 1960s and lasted to the 1990s.

So currently YES the system is lenient compared to the previous generation and we’ve got the homicides to prove it. This is a rerun, history as tragic farce. You can play games with the statistics all you want, but yes incarceration is strangely related to crime going up or down.

Those of us who lived through those times heard it all before, yes all your arguments above dears …heard it all before.

The incarceration rates began to rise in the 1980s at the behest of the Black Congressional Caucus, who’s constituents got tired of having to sleep in the bathtub hiding from stray bullets. See you the efforts of Charles Rangrel, and one Senator Joe Biden. Biden asked Reagan for crack to have 87X the amount of years mandatory sentencing compared to powder cocaine, Reagan aghast got it down to 23 times. The mandatory minimums were pushed through by Democrats. Combined with common sense policing of not ignoring small offenses as those encourage large ones and the stop-n-frisk policies, along with Section 8 vouchers and gentrification all eventually ground down the criminals into the prison or scattered their ‘communities’ to the wind ala section 8 housing vouchers. So that’s how the NYC murder rate dropped from 2500 to under 300 in a few years.

Now the Goobers of the World shalt troubleshoot this…but as noted I and others have heard this all before. Higher Incarceration=Lower Crime.

The Szopens of the world who have absolutely no idea personally of why Detroit is Mogadishu, USA but Winsdor Canada’s biggest crime is Air Pollution [comparative murders 2018: Detroit 261, Winsdor 9] the Szopen’s of the world can amuse themselves with ‘incarceration statistics’…but as noted sorry kiddos we’ve heard all this bullshit before.

How about an old joke who’s time has come again?
Q:What’s the most confusing day in _______ ?
A: Father’s Day!!

As far as kids getting the switch, that would require actual functioning families and Fathers…and…look there’s only so much farce to go around ok? Those kids get PLENTY of violence growing up, half the gang members join to get protection from their own houses. No it’s not the father [whoever THAT is]…it’s whoever Mama is sleeping with this week beating up [and often enough raping] the kids. They flat out join gangs to get protection, not from gangs..but their own ‘families’.

So don’t worry, we shan’t attempt a return to corporal punishment. Heinlein was writing about a world that cannot and does not apply to them..it’s far too late. Only so much farce to go around.

Sorry, you are right, somehow I missed totally the last paragraph. Stupid me. I should right away go at the conclusion: the thing is the criminal system in your country seemed and still seem to incarcerate people x at very high rates.

As you surely know, most crimes are committed by small percentage of people; usually young males. If large part of young males, those most likely to commit crimes, is confined in prisons, then it’s really hard to argue that the system is in fact quite lenient. Moreover, looking at when incarceration rates start to go up, it’s even not that too far to think that system in 70s and later was acting differently than system in early 60s.

Read the last paragraph of my comment.

As for current crime rates, they’re still lower than the were. The recent uptick is so far a smallish blip. Time will tell if it corrects or keeps going.

Other jurisdictions use monolithic reporting systems, New York’s CompStat being the first and most famous. Ever since it went online, there have been people who have questioned discrepancies between its reports and what was being logged at the individual precincts.

We always have to be careful with FedGov statistics. The potential for “Accurate but misleading” is always there.

If a San Francisco DA decides to stop prosecuting all kinds of activities such a shoplifting, vandalism, minor thefts; and the police & individuals consequently stop reporting issues or bringing charges — does that mean the crime rate has gone down?

What about incarceration rates? Did they go down too?

Have you checked the crime rates recently? Might want to re-think your point.

But then crime rates started dropping. They’ve been dropping every year. Property crime is down to pre-1960 rates. Murder went from 40 per 100,000 in blacks, to 20. The rate dropped very slightly for whites also, however, it was always pretty low so that comparative change, while similar in total % delta, is small in X per 100,000 delta simply because it was never that big to begin with.

The upshot here is that the seemingly silly criminal justice system of the “bygone era” described by Heinlein’s grizzled veteran civics instructor here, at least seems to be working, without the need to flog anyone.

I’m actually not against flogging as a punishment, by the by, for a simple reason: when done in a careful and prescribed way, I feel like it is a much more humane punishment than locking someone in a cage with a group of violent criminals for years of their precious life. It’s quick and punctuated, the punishment is clear and unambiguous, and you aren’t taking a car thief and making him into a violent monster by forcing him into a general population of other monsters.

I promise you that were I ever nicked for stealing, and was given the choice of a flogging or a year behind bars, I’d jump at the chance to be flogged. A few weeks of pain and recovery, and I have my life back.

This would at least partially resolve another issue, which is that at least part of the reason our crime rates have dropped so much is that the population of incarcerated people has likewise gone up, which I’m sure has something to do with crime rates going down.