US crime plummets!!!

Good news. I make little of it as crime rates go in cycles and usually defy what people expect of them (e.g. people think teh 90's were bad but back in their grandpappy's age it was worse, then there were a few "down" decades etc).

Fantastic! I recall reading recently that one of the reasons for the drop in the murder rate is better medical care. That is, some victims, if they get to the hospital, have a better chance of surviving their injuries. Hence, there are fewer organs available for transplant. It's interesting here, how violent crimes decreased, but it doesn't look like it's a huge decrease. Hmmm.

E. g. let's say there were 10 murders and 10 assaults in 1993. And then in 2003 the same 20 attacks occur (not on the same people of course but otherwise assume the circumstances are identical). But due to better treatment, only 8 of them die, so there are 12 assaults recorded instead of 10.

But here we have both fewer assaults and fewer murders, so it's not just a function of improved care (although hey, that never hurts). It's something else - fewer attacks.

Is the reason, perhaps, the fact that (if I recall correctly) there are more people in prison than ever before? Prior restraint is illegal, but this would beg the question - is locking up people for the sake not of rehab or even punishment, but rather to keep them away from the rest of society, the engine that's driving this good news?

The article does heavily attribute the drastic improvement in crime stats to more prisons. I'd like to think it was a better behaved populace--but I'll take it however I can get it.

It also contradicts the "more prisons" argument and says that the politicizing of the statistics should be avoided.

More prisons lead to lower crime rates? The logic seems a bit Swiftian--he once, as satire, wrote that the Irish could solve their hunger problem by eating their babies...

The Justice Policy Institute is quick to point out that the areas with the greatest prinson expantion were areas in which murders were higher in 2002.

Ah but that is EXCLUDING murder. Murders are up, and other violent crimes are down. This means that there is a higher capacity for criminals to go that final step during the commission of a crime and actually kill someone.

And I wonder if those statistics are "reported" crimes or "convicted" numbers.

According to the 2001 Justice Department statistics, one out of every 37 U.S. adults had been in state or federal prison at some point in her or his lifetime.

Well, this really should stop sometime.

U.S. incarceration rates are way beyond other Western countries. If this isn't cause for concern in this country, it certainly should be.

Especially when it comes to getting a job! Each applicant for a job must reveal their criminal record and/or is subject to a background check. If employers are to be held legally liable for their employees honesty won't they run out of people soon who haven't spent some time in jail/prison?