OMG, It's raining. GeneWright, posted: "Neither of you have any facts, reasons, or data. You both just have the feelings that you're right." NEWS FLASH FOR @GeneWright and anyone else WHO CANNOT READ AND UNDERSTAND SIMPLE ENGLISH: I HAVE NO FEELINGS! Except for the intense JOY I'd get watching enemies of America and criminals tortured and fed to animals. CLEAR NOW? He's a fact for you and your ilk: 87% of coverage in the corrupt left wing media is NEGATIVE for the Republicans. THAT'S WHY YOUR "FACTS" ARE FRACTURED! Shame on you if you are so brainwashed that you leave the democrats' in power this mid term. It will prove you are TOTALLY IGNORANT!
Are you like, allergic to sourcing your claims? It looks from here like you have no facts or statistics whatsoever to add to the bail reform argument. Simply your feelings about what you think things are like.
The rain stopped. @Gene is Wright has the FACTS and "statistics." I only have real life examples. Gene wins!
Okay, time to jump into the fray . . . That graphic below which you posted misleadingly distorts the truth by displaying cherry-picked data, as it fails to include any other nations in the top 30 for incarceration rates, accentuating the difference between the US and the other nations in the plot. While the chart below still shows the US at the top of the heap, it makes obvious that others are not that far behind. One important reason the United States has a higher incarceration rate than the nations in your graphic is that we have a much higher crime rate in America than most of those nations do. Most of the nations on that graphic have crime rates substantially lower than the US . . . some being less than half ours (US is approx 47/100,000 every year). Consider the two plots below, one showing the nations with the lowest crime rate . . . And the other with those having the highest . . . Now the crime rate alone certainly doesn't account for the disparity we see, however other factors pile on, amplifying the effect. Take, for instance, the fact that most of the nations listed with high crime rates probably cannot afford imprisonment as a means of safekeeping their citizens, and that most of those with enough money to do so seem to have less crime per capita. Not only can the United States better afford to imprison more criminals, and for longer, but we also appear to have many more criminals than other wealthy nations do. Certainly not a common combination . . . Why the difference in crime rates between the US and other wealthier nations then? I'm no xenophobe, but it's uncanny how the meteoric rise in incarceration rate in the US almost perfectly tracks to the entry of foreign-born immigrants into the United States. That many of the nations from which so many immigrants come appear on the higher end of the Crime Index raises the question whether unregulated immigration exacerbates that disparity. Does entering the country without being qualified through our Immigration and Naturalization Service disproportionately bring a culture of crime, of compromised integrity, and / or unrestrained behavior within our borders? Given the unregulated influx of illegal immigrants these past few years, perhaps a couple of percent of our population, I have to wonder if both the crime and incarceration rates are destined to climb correspondingly. We certainly see a lot more baby killings, car-jackings, drug busts and cop killings in the news lately. Whether there is a direct correlation between unregulated immigration and crime or not, we should not be playing dumb here. Embracing unregulated, unbridled immigration into the United States is unwise and, as might be deduced from the foregoing, may well be far worse than that.
Thank you for the thoughtful reply! Now to address it. I think it was less misleading and more of an apples to apples comparison as it pared the list down to countries with similar wealth and development levels. Though I would like to note near the end of page 1 I posted a more inclusive source like your graphic as well. The point being, do you think it's good enough to say "we're still the worst, but it's not that bad if you put us in the company of places like El Salvador, Turkmenistan, and Rwanda?" That's still quite the indictment of us. I think you have an interesting theory here that definitely explains some of the disparity. I'd add though that we tend to give longer sentences for more "crimes" than other wealthy nations. I noticed on the site you linked they calculate crime rate by any crimes committed. Therefore, a country that over criminalizes with frivolous laws would have an inflated crime rate. One thing I think you're missing, foreign born =/= undocumented. Here's an interesting study looking at Texan crime rates, as a place that has a lot of undocumented immigrantion occurring. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2014704117 They find that foreign born people are less likely to commit crime, by a lot when they're undocumented. By a little if they're here legally. This makes perfect sense to me, most people just want to mind their own business. I'm of course in Korea legally, but I recognize I'm a guest they don't have to allow to stay so I'm on best behavior/try not to cause problems. If these results generalize the rest of the population, it may be the case that immigration lowers our overall crime rate. Final thought here, we do certainly see these things more often, but that doesn't mean it reflects reality. Violent crime, which appears to be what you're referring to, peaked in the 90s. I think there were mild spikes in 2020, but it's still way down compared to our recent past. I think our seeing it more is a product of the digital age and everyone being able to document and share experiences with little effort.
Who cares about the battle of the graphs. Swift justice solves the problem. Dead crooks don't commit crimes. I'd give a pass to our politician's because over half of them are criminals!
Who says being at the extreme on that chart is bad? With such a high crime rate in this country, if we do a fine job of protecting Americans against criminals by imprisoning them, that's a pretty attractive alternative to having them out on the streets, and needing to employ more police to compensate, is it not? You, so unwaiveringly writing, "Therefore, a country that over criminalizes with frivolous laws would have an inflated crime rate" is akin to me writing "A country with a low incarceration rate empowers its criminal element to trample the rights of its remaining citizens". I do believe that the "Legal Immigrants" embody the traditional, and now-subsiding American ethos, wherein one puts up with inconvenience and discomfort, and makes front-end sacrifices to attain their goals. Our naturalization system is designed to make sure immigrants are well-prepared for life in America, and a by-product of that is the separation of the wheat from the chaff. I do believe Legal Immigrants bring down the crime rate in America . . . they believe in hard work, sacrifice and the power of free enterprise. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that I admire them more than most natural-born Americans in America today. I don't buy for a New York minute that "Undocumented Immigrants" bring down the average crime rate. Undocumented Immigrants are so-described because we have no good way of tracking them, and no way of knowing how many there are. Likely, the only ones we know something of are those who have been arrested, hospitalized, schooled, legally employed, etc. Those who do not want to be found, likely will not be, and therefore, will not be counted. Whether those be gang members, drug runners / dealers, human traffickers, drifters, identity thieves, violent criminals on-the-run, they skew the numbers, and the corresponding plot in the first graphic in your response above should not even have been attempted by the source . . . it's a fool's errand to do so, and you and they already know that. If I were you I'd toss that argument out and start again. I think you are seeing what you want to see. The decline in crime beginning in the 1990s can be attributed mostly to factors you would rather not recognize. An excellent paper on this subject is "Understanding Why Crime Fell in the 1990s: Four Factors that Explain the Decline and Six that Do Not", by Steven D. Levitt, and published by the Journal of Economic Perspectives. This says an awful lot to contradict liberal claims.
It's bad because it's clearly not working, or we'd have the lowest crime rates in the world by now. Looking into their methodology, they use census data of all foreign people, then subtract the legal ones and make slight adjustments to account for the rest. If anything, this would seem like they are undercounting the illegal immigrant population by taking a very conservative approach to counting their total population. This likely means their crime rate is even lower than what is in the graph above. There are accurate ways to conservatively predict their population numbers, and I think that's important to recognize so that the number doesn't get used against us as a shape-shifting boogeyman. Interesting read, thanks for the resource. However, I was more remarking that crime is down as a whole, to push back against the right wing media perception that the U.S. is a lawless crazyland and ideas like:
Do you have a problem with that? Do you disagree? Can you stop posting nonsense? Are you trying to become a "Memorable Member" and run up your post count like @JoeNation? LOL, you already are "extremely" memorable like the first time I got drunk and threw up chunks of stuff.
Poor logic you've applied here, GW . . . if we have a higher crime rate than most nations to begin with, what makes you think that a high incarceration rate would necessarily deliver the lowest crime rate? Please show me the data that backs up that claim . . . I disagree . . . if the portion of the illegal immigrant population they are counting are those evading the law, and the portion of the illegal immigrant population they are undercounting are not evading the law, then yes, their crime rate would be even lower than what is in the graph. If flipped around, the opposite would be true. Please show me with data that crime is down across the board . . .
The claim being that incarceration is an effective way to reduce crime, is what is not supported. I don't actually think incarceration does deliver a lower crime rate, but those who would call for more strict jailing and policing seem to think it does. Not sure I followed what you're trying to say here. Here's violent crime, though I don't actually know if it's true for non-violent crime. It's not as big of a deal though. It's very well established that violent crime peaked in the 90's
It sure the hell does while the offender is in prison, no? He is opining that breaking the law is breaking the law, and it doesn't matter what the race, creed or religion of the offender is. I get that you are trying to play the Race Card, and you think white society is just racist, but at some point, you are going to experience an epiphany. The sooner the better, for you and yours, because all your blathering appears to do is support social crimes, regardless of the validity of the law. If you actually believe violent crime peaked in the 90s, YOU are the problem. Yes, the population has increased. Yes, of course that would reflect a lower incident rate. However, translating that into a "See? We are no longer in need of those dastardly cops and their racism" conclusion is...and there is no other nice description...ignorant. It is still a very big damn deal. Go to any city anywhere in the U.S. and explain to the local constituency that the crime is no big deal, because there was more in the 90s. Do so in the local watering hole, and you may experience first hand what violence is.
@GeneWright I'm confused. I'm going to make a stupid oversimplification to eliminate any wiggle room while making my point (crime goes down) and understanding yours. If we were to kill anyone who committed any crime at all... 1. Would the number of folks who committed crimes go down? Yes or no? 2. Would that make the crime rate statistics go down? Yes or no?
Okay, I'll try rearranging the words used to make it more intuitive. If the illegal immigrant population counted are those breaking the law, then counting additional immigrants who don't break the law affects the results favorably because more immigrants are counted without attributing additional crimes to their demographic. If the counted illegal immigrant population are law-abiding citizens, then additional immigrants who break the law increase the criminal activity attributable to their demographic. Does that help? What? . . . Not a big deal? . . . You don't think violent criminals start small? It's just as well-established that the US incarceration rates increased at the same time. I'd directly link the decrease in crime to the increase in incarceration of criminals. Well, setting aside what one thinks, and looking at the data above, it sure looks like the causal relationship can be established.
