In a prior post, I had written that acceptance of crime is a policy choice. Most quality of life crimes like stolen packages, bike thefts and car break ins, can be addressed by simple sting operations and relatively harsh punishments that make it uneconomical for the bad actors to continue.
Then there are crimes that are more damaging to society, what I call anti-social crimes, or “punching a random woman on the subway” crimes. These are harder to deter as the participants are not acting on economic incentives. But those can be addressed by simply removing these people from society during their most anti-social years (20 - 35 year old commit most of these crimes).
Power law in crime statistics
I argued that there these crimes are committed by a relatively few number of bad actors and removing those people from society would significantly reduce crime. Most people know this to be true. Judges and police certainly do as they deal with the same individuals over and over again.
But even I underestimated the concentration of the criminal activity to a tiny group. A study of persons admitted into state prison’s found the following:
Among persons admitted to state prison in 2014 across 34 states, 77% had five or more prior arrests in their criminal history, including the arrest that resulted in their prison sentence.
The study continues:
About half of persons admitted in 2014 were released by the end of 2015. Among these released persons, over half (59%) were arrested at least once within 2 years, including 16% for a violent offense. Forty-two percent were arrested for a public order offense within 2 years of release, making it the most common arrest offense for the 2014 admission cohort.
The full study goes into more detail.
The number of prisoners that have had 15 or more prior arrests is over 26%
Here’s a column chart, which shows a surprising amount of prisoners with 31 or more prior arrests.
That’s an impressive feat considering you can’t get arrested while in prison and most crimes are committed by young men. Throw in the fact that most crimes don’t lead to arrest, you’re looking at a lot of crime in a very condensed period.
Maybe 3 strikes laws are unjust, but how about 5 strikes? 10 strikes? Even 15 strikes would make a dent.
Nature of crimes being committed
If you’re curious what a “public order offense” is, it’s “violations of the peace or order of the community or threats to public health or safety through unacceptable conduct, interference with a governmental authority, and the violation of civil rights or liberties”. Examples include weapons charges and DUI.
And these aren’t personal use drug related charges. In fact, after Biden pardoned all those in prison with marijuana offenses, a senior official said they couldn’t find a single person in federal prison solely for simple possession of marijuana. There has been a long standing myth of the kid thrown in jail for smoking a joint. This hasn’t been true for a long time.
The actual offenses are worse.
73% of the prior offenses are violent and 80% are property related (obviously non-exclusive)
What’s the point of prison anyway?
I remember hearing about recidivism rates in the 1990s and swayed by the argument that high recidivism rates means that prisons are flawed. The underlying idea is that the point of prison is to rehabilitate the individual. It’s an admirable goal and we should strive for that as much as possible. But the primary goal of prisons is to prevent that person from harming others, at least in his most chaotic years in his life. And in that case, high recidivism rates suggest we should consider increasing prison sentences.
But of course its a trade off. Policy should allow for second chances, no matter how unlikely to be utilized. And then there’s the obvious trade off between privacy, civil rights and policing. But this balance is what we should be discussing rather than putting our heads in the sand and ignoring the fact that such a small percentage of people are causing the overwhelming majority of harm.