Saturday, March 19, 2011

Red State, Blue State, Crime and Prison - How Do They Compare? Part 1

Yesterday's fact checking led me to inquire how red states stack up in comparison to blue states, as a reflection of their political ideologies reflected in statistics.  This should provide us a glimpse into what we can look forward to here, if the Republican legislature succeeds in pushing through their agenda.

Conservatives claim they want less government (usually while intruding their version of government even more deeply, not less, into peoples' private lives).  What they fail to acknowledge in their simplistic assumption that their idea of less government is somehow better, is to provide a way to evaluate if that is true or if their measures are successful.  If we look at the nations which really ARE number 1 among the industrialized nations of the world, the nations with which we should be compared, ALL of them are more socialized than we are, while remaining every bit as free, and every bit as governed by law and elected representative government. 

The proper question to ask in evaluating government is does it work to benefit the country of the governed, and effectively and in a cost-effective manner achieve the goals we choose by  consensus?  THAT, not ideology, should be the determining criteria for what is and is not appropriate activities for government.

An example, instead of imposing the beliefs of a narrow religious minority of fundamentalists on people in areas like abstinence only sex ed, the better question is "what works most effectively to promote the lowest possible levels of unwanted teenage pregnancies and the lowest possible levels of sexually transmitted diseases" and then DOING THOSE THINGS as our public health and education policy, regardless of stupid biases by the right about ideology or whether that education is 'Christian enough' or does it track with the writing of the founding fathers reflecting 18th century ideas in the 21st century.  To govern by ideology, not rationality, not pragmatism, not objective measurement of goals by consensus is insane, and it is stupid.

I looked at the issue of crime and incarceration statistics from the premise that conservatives tend ideologically more to take the approach of criminalizing and penalizing problems in an attempt to reduce them, rather than the more liberal approach of seeking out the causes of problems, and correcting those which government and society can affect or change for the better by legislation and public policy choices.

An example of this political divergence in looking at our problems with education would be the right attacking teachers, while the left and center look at issues like the correlation between poverty and poor educational performance, particularly aid to funding lunch programs for students in K-12, based on the correlation between nutrition.  The Right wants to cut so far as possible all such assistance, claiming it is socialism and welfare, and therefore BAD.

In the area of crime, I think it can be argued that there is a greater desire on the right to lock people up, and in some states, to execute people, as a way of dealing with crime, and also a greater willingness to criminalize problems.  Lets look at the number of people in jails and prisons, which is important, because we have the highest rate of putting people behind bars of any country in the world.  Per good ol' wikipedia:
"Though home to a little less than 5% of the world’s population, the US holds 25% of the world’s prisoners.
The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world. The U.S. incarceration rate on June 30, 2009 was 748 inmates per 100,000 U.S. residents, or 0.75%.The USA also has the highest total documented prison and jail population in the world.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) 7,225,800 people at year end 2009 were on probation, in jail or prison, or on parole — about 3.1% of adults in the U.S. resident population, or 1 in every 32 adults.
Not exactly something where we want to scream "We're Number One! We're Number One!"  This is a very important subject for a country where the right likes to throw out the word "Freedoms", like beads off a float in a Mardi Gras parade in 'the Big Easy'.
Lets use this map  from wikipedia to show red and blue, and purple states:

Summary of results of the 1996, 2000, 2004, and 2008 presidential elections:

States carried by the Republican in all four elections
States carried by the Republican in three of the four elections
States carried by each party twice in the four elections
States carried by the Democrat in three of the four elections
States carried by the Democrat in all four elections
 In contrast to states by politics, I looked at a similar map (sorry, I couldn't reproduce it here) from page 7 of the 2009  Pew Report who got their figures from:
SOURCE: Calculation includes offenders in state and federal jail, prison and community supervision and is based on data from the U.S. Census State Population Estimates, the Bureau of Justice Statistics Correctional Surveys available at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/tables/corr2tab.htm, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, the Administrative O€ce of U.S. Courts and the Pew Public Safety Performance Project.
The ten states with the highest percentage of people incarcerated, as of 2007,
 and D.C.(compared to 1 in 31, the national average):
Georgia - 1 in 13                                 Delaware - 1 in 26
Idaho - 1 in 18                                     Indiana - 1 in 26
District of Columbia - 1 in 21             Louisiana - 1 in 26
Texas - 1 in 22                                    Minnesota - 1 in 26
Massachusetts - 1 in 24                     Rhode Island - 1 in 26
Ohio - 1 in 25
Six are red states, including the top 3, 1 is a purple state, and only 3 are blue states. states high in violent crime by red state / blue state, the top ten with the highest rates of violent crime are:


Break it out by specifically
1  South Carolina                       6  Alaska
2  Tennessee                              7  Delaware
3  Nevada                                   8  Maryland
4  Florida                                    9  New Mexico
5  Louisiana                              10  Michigan
The colors speak for themselves.  While the Right argues about the need for budget tightening, the costs of incarcerating people is enormous in this country, and counter-productive to our safety -- in other words some of the least bang for the buck in having safe communities:
After an extraordinary, quarter-century expansion of American prisons, one unmistakable policy truth has emerged: We cannot build our way to public safety.


Serious, chronic and violent offenders belong behind bars, for a long time, and the expense of locking them up is justified many times over. But for hundreds of thousands of lower-level inmates, incarceration costs taxpayers far more than it saves in prevented crime. And new national and state research shows that we are well past the point of diminishing returns, where more imprisonment will prevent less and less crime.
and from further into the same report:
The 10 states with the largest number of people in the corrections system include those with reputations for toughness, like Texas and Louisiana, but also Idaho, Ohio and Massachusetts.


Similarly, the 10 states with the lowest correctional control rates include rural and northeastern states like Iowa and Maine, but also states with large urban populations, such as New York, and with long sentences for violent offenders like Virginia.
Unfortunately from what I see from the right, they like to congratulate themselves on their sense of superiority based on ideological thinking rather than rational, logical thinking. That ideology doesn't work; if it did there would be fewer states with high numbers of prisoners, high rates of violent crime, poor educational achievement, high drug use, high unwanted pregnancy and STD rates, and high divorce rates - despite the right's lip service to 'family values'. Lip service doesn't cut it; and the right's ideology is inadequate and performs poorly in the real world of measurement and statistics. I don't like seeing the United States 'Number 1' in locking people behind bars; I don't like seeing my home state of Minnesota in the top ten states for doing so either. However, with conservative 'values' driving decisions, policy, and legislation, I'm not hopeful that we will drop out of the top 10 states for locking people behind bars any time soon.  I expect we will hear that justifed by conservatives claiming to be tough on crime, and for public safety, and that they will be blaming poor people and immigrants (both legal and illegal) -- blaming anyone except taking a hard look at the results of their own ideology driven decisions in government.

9 comments:

  1. I would point out that it says we are #1 of documented prisoners. This is from The Straight Dope.
    "Chinese human rights activist Harry Wu, who spent 19 years in forced-labor camps for criticizing the government, estimates that 16 to 20 million of his countrymen are incarcerated, including common criminals, political prisoners, and people in involuntary job placements. Even ten million prisoners would make for a rate of 793 per 100,000.

    Another nation suspected to have a lot of prisoners is North Korea. The country isn't listed in ICPS statistics, but a recent NBC News investigation put the number of political prisoners alone at 200,000, or more than 900 per 100,000."

    Also Britian and other countries have been catching up to us in violent crime, theirs going up and ours going down, could this be because their bad guys are less likely to go to jail? Now I will agree with you that we take minor offenses far too serious. Telling kids not to use tobacco is great, arresting them or even giving them a ticket for it is ridiculous. Most of our drug laws need work also, getting caught with a joint for the 3rd time should not bring the same sentence as being caught with a kg of coke for the 3rd time but in many states it does.

    I do have to say though that I think you are way off on the every bit as free part. In Canada columnists can get sued, and have been, for writing columns critical of muslims (or any other group). In England there are cameras all over the place watching you, almost no one can own a gun, and if a robber breaks into your house and you fight him you might go to jail with him. I would not call that every bit as free.

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  2. also reposting a comment for our friend Mr. Tucker here:
    ttucker has left a new comment on your post "Red State, Blue State, Crime and Prison - How Do T...":

    I would point out that it says we are #1 of documented prisoners. This is from The Straight Dope.
    "Chinese human rights activist Harry Wu, who spent 19 years in forced-labor camps for criticizing the government, estimates that 16 to 20 million of his countrymen are incarcerated, including common criminals, political prisoners, and people in involuntary job placements. Even ten million prisoners would make for a rate of 793 per 100,000.

    Another nation suspected to have a lot of prisoners is North Korea. The country isn't listed in ICPS statistics, but a recent NBC News investigation put the number of political prisoners alone at 200,000, or more than 900 per 100,000."

    Also Britian and other countries have been catching up to us in violent crime, theirs going up and ours going down, could this be because their bad guys are less likely to go to jail? Now I will agree with you that we take minor offenses far too serious. Telling kids not to use tobacco is great, arresting them or even giving them a ticket for it is ridiculous. Most of our drug laws need work also, getting caught with a joint for the 3rd time should not bring the same sentence as being caught with a kg of coke for the 3rd time but in many states it does.

    I do have to say though that I think you are way off on the every bit as free part. In Canada columnists can get sued, and have been, for writing columns critical of muslims (or any other group). In England there are cameras all over the place watching you, almost no one can own a gun, and if a robber breaks into your house and you fight him you might go to jail with him. I would not call that every bit as free.

    Posted by ttucker to A Penigma - a mystery, under a pseudonym at March 19, 2011 6:52 PM

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  3. Tucker, while there is no accurate way to account for documented prisoners, being ahead of China for them is not a compliment. We have estimates for other countries based on the research done by Human Rights groups; it is not as if we don't know there are problems. Let me point out that we have 'disappeared' people through our own rendition process which doesn't account for our fellow human beings publicly either.

    "people in involuntary job placements" comes closer to issues of slavery - which does still exist in the world - than it does to the issue of imprisoning people for crimes, or even political dissent.

    When you write Tuck:
    "In Canada columnists can get sued, and have been, for writing columns critical of muslims (or any other group)."

    Getting sued in a civil court for damages over what you write, as a result of laws which are passed by the people they elected, is being as free as anyone else in the world if you live in Canada. This has no bearing as a comment on a post written about crime and prison, and freedom from being behind bars.

    Then Tuck wrote "In England there are cameras all over the place watching you,"
    as compared to what - every mall, every business, every parking ramp, every public elevator, google earth, and every person with a cell phone camera or video camera running in this country?

    So the UK has cc video cameras for security reasons, to prevent crime, exclusively in public places - so what? HOW does that make them less free, or their government less representative? People are aware of those cameras, elected representatives voted for them and the money to fund them.

    Compare that to the way our government spies on our own citizens, with and without warrants, WITHOUT US knowing about it. Again however, not really pertinent to a discussion about crime and prison and freedom.

    "almost no one can own a gun, and if a robber breaks into your house and you fight him you might go to jail with him. I would not call that every bit as free."

    Again - decisions about personal weapons are complex, but in other countries they have elected to be more restrictive - THEIR RIGHT to do that, without it making them 'less free'. The trade off is hugely fewer numbers of gun deaths and injuries as a result of those choices, which many people see as far closer to a rational policy promoting 'life, liberty adn the pursuit of happiness'.

    People DO go to jail in this country, Tuck, for using excessive force with guns, like shooting intruders who are trying to leave instead of letting them go.

    I would suggest that you check out this source:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate

    which has deaths by firearm at:
    United States 10.2[4] 15.22[3]

    and for comparison:
    England/ Wales 0.46[3] 0.38 ( both per 100,000 population per year).

    Fewer people behind bars, FAR fewer fire arms related deaths? Very similarly representative governments? Gosh, that sure sounds like MORE freedom (as defined by not behind bars AND alive) than the U.S.A.

    For a crime comparison, I suggest this site, which also doesn't put us at very free (from crimes) in comparison to comparable industrialized countries with representative governments - applicable to this post/ discussion:

    http://www.nationmaster.com/red/graph/cri_tot_cri-crime-total-crimes&b_map=1

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  4. One thing I agree with is that we have too many people in jail. I say all possession of marijuana people get out immediately, except for maybe big time dealers. Same goes for possession for personal use of other drugs. Next, I say all white-collar guys get out immediately but have to pay. Even big time guys like Madoff should be punished in their wallet not by taking up space in prison.

    About the government interference in private affairs, I'm of conflicting opinions. I like the libertarian philosophy, which might come as a surprise to my commenters, but when it comes to gun control laws I think we need federal control which would be binding on all the states and all the people. Only that way could a consistency be achieved which could address some of the problems.

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  5. Thanks Mike for your comment - I think some sort of nationwide minimum compliance has to be mandated as well. I particularly like the attempts to make the NCIS compliance mandatory, so that the more than 30 states which are not providing names to that data base have to become current for example.

    I disagree though about the jailing of white collar criminals. We have a lot of that kind of crime, and it is devestating. There are real victims, as real as the victims of violent crime.

    What would you do with all the white collar criminals who don't pay/ can't pay, because either they have spent the money, or like the affinity scammers here in MN, they have probably hidden the money off-shore and are waiting out their sentences to go get their ill-gotten millions?

    Without jail time, what solutions are there for leverage against these guys? Even with jail, there doesn't seem to be much that can be done.

    I'm against drugs, even pot, don't wish to use it, don't like the prospect of people around me using it (like drivers who can be impaired). But the most compelling argument for legalization that I've heard so far was from a conservative who might become one of the GOP presidential contenders, surprisingly enough, Gary Johnson, governor of New Mexico, a libertarian.

    He has advocated for evaluating government performance by a very strict cost-benefit analysis - REAL performance measurement. He is NOT (so far as I can tell) one of the privatize everything under ths sun crowd. AND he actually criticized Obama for not being quick enough to get rid of Don't Ask Don't Tell.

    This guy might actually be something new -a 21st century kind of Republican. In contrast to the clock-stoppers, one of those Log Cabin republicans who seems to want to live in an actual log cabin from the 18th or early 19th century, running around in the woods with guns, fearing native americans, hispanics, and asians, and reading only the Bible, from the bad old days before union labor or environmental safety legislation.

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  6. Some of Johnson's surprising positions:

    http://www.sfexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/2011/02/republican-gary-johnson-its-time-legalize-marijuana

    Our MN T-Paw who apparently wants to make GOD our public policy instead of respecting that we are and must remain a secular country of people who pursue a variety of religions.
    http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20031584-503544.html

    Prayer is important and it is powerful, and it is uiquely personal. It is NOT appropriate as a matter of pubulic policy. I particularly cringe at the 'we're in the end days' mentality of people like Bachmann, who want to set our public policy - particularly our foreign policy - on that assumption, including our support for Israel not on the basis of it being a democracy in the middle east, but because that will speed up the 2nd coming of Christ.

    I also have a really serious problem with the premise that the 2nd Amendment somehow codifies a right guaranteed to us from the bible (MikeB did a superb post on that recently).

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  7. For those whose curiosity I may have piqued - here is the link to MikeB's post about the fallacy of biblical gun rights:

    http://mikeb302000.blogspot.com/2011/03/biblical-justification-luke-1121.html

    Awesome post!

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  8. You're right about the white-collar criminals. A sweeping statement like I often make about not jailing them does raise problems. But I think the vast majority are doing less than ten years, and would gladly give the government access to their hidden assets in exchange for a suspended sentence. Then the probation department needs to be better equipped to supervise these guys.

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  9. I think the fact that these scumbags are still doing only 10 years or less in many cases is already the result of them buying their way out from behind bars. I think they are already getting off too lightly for that abuse of trust and their fiduciary responsibility. Too few of them are prosecuted already.

    I say lets bill the white collar bastards for their expenses of incarceration, and not let them out early unless they pay up before leaving prison.

    The problem I have with them getting off entirely with suspended sentences is that what they do IS a crime, and should be punished accordingly. Often the people they take advantage of are in fact somewhat vulnerable or at a disadvantage in the sense of an unequal level of expertise.

    We don't want to create two kinds of justice, one for the rich and one for the poor. Or one for those who swindle their way to getting rich, while making others poor.

    Our civil courts are in part creating that problem already - see our affinity scam series for examples.

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