> In 1970 the proportion of Americans behind bars was below one in 400, compared with today’s one in 100. Since then, the voters, alarmed at a surge in violent crime, have demanded fiercer sentences. Politicians have obliged. New laws have removed from judges much of their discretion to set a sentence that takes full account of the circumstances of the offence. Since no politician wants to be tarred as soft on crime, such laws, mandating minimum sentences, are seldom softened. On the contrary, they tend to get harder.
On top of that, you also have an entrenched set of special interests who benefit from the status quo (police unions, prison guard unions, private prisons, etc.), so the pressure on politicians is from two sides.
So how do you "solve" a problem that special interests, along with a sizable majority of the voting population, have no interest whatsoever in solving?
Without a massive culture shift, you don't.
The part that scares me the most is that is may be impossible to live in the US without breaking some law. When everybody is a criminal, the state gets too much power.
First: since you go to prison after the crime, the inmate population size should be a trailing indicator of the crime rate. More serious crimes affect the prison population for a long period, since their sentences are longer.
Second: take a look at these graphs, and how dramatically they shoot up around 1965:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=murder+USA
Just because someone you don't like is clamoring for more money doesn't mean no one was clamoring for money before.
Another factor is greatly improved reporting. Rape in particular used to be very poorly reported, and this has improved a lot as the social stigma against reporting it lessened. The shape long rise from the 60s to 1990 was certainly strongly affected by that.
A number of reasons exist for the recent drop in very violent crime that the murder graph shows. Demographics are surprisingly only a small part of it. Most of it was the result of public health efforts that reduced the incidence of lead poisoning. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07... for more. A much smaller factor which many have heard of was the legalization of abortion. While this has an effect, and was popularized in Freakonomics, the effect was much less than the benefit of reduced lead poisoning.
I think it mostly has something to do with the directness of democracy, not with a difference in opinion or mentality.
Democracy in the US is very local and direct, politicians can actually be punished by the voters for not being tough on crime. That’s not so easy in (for example) Germany. You vote predominantly for parties – the whole package – not politicians. Something as comparatively unimportant as criminal law is going to get swamped by all the other issues, hardly anybody will focus on the particular weak spots of one lowly member of parliament. That would be a waste of effort.
Moreover all decisions about the criminal law are made on the federal level, in commissions full of experts (a lot of academics: criminologists, psychologists …). There is no reason for politicians in those commissions not to follow their recommendations. Voters will hardly ever notice what they decide, it is going to get lost under all the other issues.
You can actually be successful as a German politician who has a image for being tough on crime on the very local level (in, say, a city state), but on that level you can do no more than strictly enforce the rules that already exist. That will hardly change incarceration rates, though.
You don’t need a culture shift, you need a different political system :)
This may sound overly idealistic. But a technology shift that is clear about openness and transparency of information, and which gradually supports voting in efficient, electronic ways (with checks and balances that prevent mob-like behavior) could help solve these problems. Could eventually be what solves a lot of this. Obama may be remembered not so much for being the first African American president, but the first one elected with social media. Information wants to be free and networks are fast.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_stagnation_in_the...
As for Germany, it seems there's a lot more political choice, even at the top levels. Due to a greater diversity of parties, which more accurately reflects people's opinions than the US's two-party system. In my view, the US isn't particularly democratic, and anyway all of these nations have top-down "democracies."
Half of CA's budget goes to education, by constitutional amendment.
What industry approaches that?
An idea alone is not going to sway the masses. An idea with proper execution and backing might. Think of it like education- a great follow along would be Plato's cave. You can bring one person into the idea-out into the world- but when they go back the majority still cannot understand what they are saying. Because of this you must convince small portions of the population either by education or force so that they may spread this new knowledge.
How do you spread said idea? By using human nature as a weapon. A powerful weapon would be confirmation basis. Get the powerful to back your idea- with money, fancy words, anything- and you can get most people to follow along. The weak depend on the powerful for survival- this could be reversed, but not likely to ever happen(see uprising).
Even if you are able to infect people with your ideologies you now have the problem of, what if this idea was the wrong? Infections ideas, just as viri in nature, are hard to cure once there is an epidemic.
So your idea does not need to be infectious or catchy or even right, it just needs to be adopted. Once you establish a user base you can then use that base to your advantage in order to spread your idea.
Interesting reads. Some have nothing really to do with what I said, just allow for a better understanding of what I mean. I am all for bad ideas, because without them how would we know the good ones?
[1] http://www.prisonexp.org/ [2] http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment [4] opr.princeton.edu/papers/opr0901.pdf [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_momentum [6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_momentum [7] http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/194270145.... [8] http://core.ecu.edu/psyc/wuenschk/stathelp/Dichot-Not.doc
The problem is in the U.S. a lot of objectively unethical activities and policies are not considered unethical. A lot of horrendous official behavior passes by without people call it what it is: Corruption.
Of course it's not just prosecutors, it's amazing sometimes to see judges, lawyers, and many other public officials participating in cases in which they clearly have stake in the outcome without people calling it out with the C-word. My conjecture is just that reforming the prosecutorial system would have a big effect on the quality of the overall system and may not be as hard as some other approaches.
Regardless I've been in despair about this for a long time myself, but more recently I've started coming to believe that shifting the ethical goal posts in this country just by using a small list of very simple and objective guidelines and focusing on key centers of corruption.
Ethics are not universal, or at least are not proven to be universal. They are a social construction. It's clear, as others have said, that it's society that needs to change. How about starting by more of us being jerks in the level and ferocity with which we decry unethical behavior large and small and place our highest priority for social and political activism within the U.S. (and many other places) on that.
America is a huge country, it’s not exactly surprising that you get all those effects you have on the federal level. That, at least to me, seems to be somewhat softened by a particular strong brand of federalism (in the European sense, meaning strong and independent local and state governments).
These laws come from DC and the states have lost a lot of the power they had initially. The federal government had a list of powers. They call them the enumerated powers. The states had everything else.
And the citizens could leave a state if they didn't like it. A lot easier to do than leaving the country.
Which is why local laws are not really that oppressive, even if they are. But federal law is all encompassing and difficult for you to influence. They can pretty much ignore the individual and usually do, except when they need something to grandstand about.
For a Japanese person, the conviction of a crime (and the shame it brings) is much worse than the jail sentence. If you are convicted of a crime, your family usually breaks off all ties with you.
Other countries (such as Singapore or China) has laws that are more harsh - which ensures that people do not break it (e.g. execution for drug offenses instead of imprisonment). If a person receives corporal punishment for vandalism, he will quickly stop without progressing towards further crimes (or run back to the USA with his tail between his legs).
The prison population might still be higher without those laws because of a difference in crime rate – but not quite as high.
The countries just aren't comparable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakuza
It seems to me the harsh punishment of crimes like vandalism is not so much lawfulness as it is about Asian values of group solidarity. When it comes to organized crime, or crime by officials, there's scarcely any need to hide it, since the population is so used to ignoring the misdeeds of the well-connected.
I agree with part of what you said: dishonor is the real punishment. But that's exactly why past a certain point, "getting tough" doesn't work. In the USA, it's so out of proportion now, that in many poor or ethnic minority communities in the USA, the police are perceived as oppressors, not guardians of law and order. And there's no big dishonor in going to jail for a time.
Violent crime in Japan is ridiculously low.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakuza
You know that a large percentage of the Yakuza are Korean? In any case, every country has organized crime - yet the Yakuza isn't that violent.
Japan isn't that violent - when you compare things such as murder statistics. I know, I lived in the most violent country and in Japan. Japan is a joke.
> But that's exactly why past a certain point, "getting tough" doesn't work.
The USA never had any really tough laws. I bet that if the USA starts executing major drug dealers (like Singapore), drugs would be a much smaller problem.
> In the USA, it's so out of proportion now, that in many poor or ethnic minority communities in the USA, the police are perceived as oppressors, not guardians of law and order.
The problem in the USA is that it only gets tough when it is too late (e.g. after the 3rd major offense). It should be tough on the first offense (however minor). It is much more difficult to change an established behaviour than a new behaviour - every animal trainer knows this (and it is the same with people).
In any case, the problem with certain ethnic communities is that they value crime (e.g. showing how tough you are) and idolize criminals. That is not the problem of the police - but of the communities. Idolize criminals, dress like criminals and act like criminals and you may be treated as one.
I bet that this idolization of organised crime would disappear if there were chain gangs of criminal members of the community cleaning parks, schools and toilets.
Instead criminals sit in prison doing nothing and each prison becomes a Crime University.
A culture shift is also needed. In most of Europe, being tough on crime is not a requirement for being elected.
Furthermore, judiciary usually isn't elected, which avoids judges themselves having to become tough on crime for their next mandate (though they're not immune to hierarchical pressures of course).
Generally speaking, "troublemakers" will go to a mental hospital before going to jail. That's probably why suicides are so high in Japan as well: the mental health system is so overloaded they can't appropriately deal with real problems.
I guess the rating of your comment reflects the result of pointing this out.
Oh no, there's no crime in Japan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Impact_of_Legalized_Abortio... http://www.isteve.com/abortion.htm http://www.slate.com/id/33569
However, if a law is passed at the federal level, you're pretty much stuck with it. With local (or hyper-local like HOAs) you can vote with your feet by moving.
My social circle is mostly educated, upper-middle class white males. Most still see police as oppressors, many have had negative experiences with police abusing power & harassing them.