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I saw this post on /r/stupidpol and thought it fit with themotte. Reposted here with permission from the author, "GeAlltidUpp"
TAKING THE BLACKPILL ON CRIME:
It is estimated that 2% of all serious crimes in the US lead to convictions (Baradaran Baughman, Shima 2020 "Police solve just 2% of all major crimes" The Conversation). CBS reports that the national murder clearance rate has sunk to 51% (2022-06-01"Crime Without Punishment"). The Murder Accountability Project estimates that "at least two percent of all murders in the US are committed by serial offenders - translating to roughly 2,100 unidentified serial killers." With the clarification that "[this does not mean that] there are 2000 active serial killers but that there are at least 2000 who have gone unrecognized as being serial killers." Former detective Michael Arntfield, who has written 12 books on serial killers, puts the numbers of unidentified repeated murderes between 3,000 and 4,000. (Kenton, Lule (2021-10-16) "Up to 4,000 serial killers whose crimes rival Ted Bundy & Zodiac loose in US & map shows where they may be, experts warn" The Sun). European welfare states aren't always that much better. In my home country pf Sweden, 80% of all deadly shootings within criminal circles in the 1990s were solved, that figure has been lowered to around 25% (2022-08-24 "Så få skjutningar leder till fällande dom i Sverige" SVT). An investigative reporter who has studied modern crime in Sweden, states that "it's very easy to be a criminal in Sweden" (2020-09-19 ”Det är väldigt lätt att vara yrkeskriminell i Sverige” DagensNyheter)
Socialists, reasonable liberals, libertarians, and shitlibs, often protest against punitive efforts, due to the risk of prisons increasing the rate of reoffending. The effect of prisons increasing criminal tendencies has probably been overstated, and might even be negligible (Harding, D., Morenoff, J., Nguyen, A. Bushway, S. 2017. "Short- and long-term effects of imprisonment on future felony convictions and prison admissions". Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. Oct 17; 114(42): 11103–11108; Al Weswasi, E., Sivertsson, F., Bäckman, O. et al. “Does sentence length affect the risk for criminal recidivism? A quasi-experimental study of three policy reforms in Sweden”. J Exp Criminol).
With that said, the concern is understandable, particularly seeing as research has shown that rehabilitative efforts leas to a greater decrease in recidivism than pure sanctions (i.e fines and jail without rehabilitative treatment)
(Lipsey, M. W., och Cullen, F. T (2007) "The effectiveness of correectional rehabilitation: A review of systematic reviews" Annu. Rev. Law Soc. Sci., 3, 297-320). Prison sentences almost always entail sanctions and rehabilitation.
The depressing thing is that despite the western world having spent an enormous amount of money on rehabilitative efforts for almost a hundred years, we've moved from a criminological majority opinion of "nothing works" to "nothing works well". (Sipes, Jr, Leonard A. (2016) "“Nothing Works” in Corrections Replaced by “Nothing Works Well?”" Crime in America).
Optimistic evaluations state that the best treatment programs can reduce recidivism by between 10 to up to nearly 40% (Lipsey, M. W., och Cullen, F. T (2007) page 303). Somber analysts have pointed out that the lower bound of 10% is probably the more realistic one (Sipes, Jr, Leonard A. 2016). Even these figures are possibly optimistic, seeing as only 2% of serious crimes lead to convictions, it is possible that a substantial amount of criminals who are deemed to be rehabilitated, in fact merely develop better techniques for avoiding prosecution over their lifespans.
Some crime rehabilitative techniques increase crime amongst particular subgroups of offenders while decreasing it amongst others (Wilson, James Q., and Herrnstein, Richard J. (1988{1985}) "Crime and Human Nature: The Definitive Study of the Causes of Crime" The Free Press: New York - First Free Press Paperback Edition, page 19; Kärrholm, Fredrik (2020) "Gangstervåldet" chapter 16 - referencing (1977) "Nytt Straffsystem" BRÅ, page 105). Knowing that you've placed the right subgroup in the right program, isn't always easy. As recently as 2016, Sweden had to disband treatment meant to increase empathy amongst pedophiles, because new research showed that it most likely increased the risk of reoffending ("Behandling för sexförbrytare kan ha ökat återfallsrisken"SR). To be fair, a similar effect exists within therapy, where roughly 5-10% are estimated to suffer more due to their treatment (Goldhill, Olivia (2016-03-20) "Therapy can actually make things worse for some people" Quartz;Snaprud, Per (2019-07-09) "Psykoterapi kan öka plågorna" Forskning och Framsteg)
Furthermore, crime can't be fought by simply increasing welfare and redistributing resources. I'm pro generous welfare, strong unions, and I even want to expropriate some businesses and move towards a planned economy or a market socialist one. So I'm not saying this to try and dissuade you from leftist politics, nor is any of this meant as an argument for cruel prisons or capital punishment. With that said, economic justice probably isn't enough to fight crime. To quote a book on the subject:
"Some people hate the welfare state, and have a tendency to blame it for crime. Others like the welfare state, attributing crime to not having more of it. I maintain that crime variation in industrial nations have nothing to do with the welfare state. In general, it is a mistake to assume that crime is part of a larger set of social evils, such as unemployment, poverty, social injustice, or human suffering. I call this the Welfare-state fallacy.
It is interesting to see partisans on this issue pick out their favorite indicators, samples of nations, and periods of history in trying to substantiate their assertions. We see all the economic indicators rising with crime from 1963 to 1975 [...] We see the same indicators changing inversely to crime in the last few years in the United States. We also note that most crime rates went down during the Great Depression.
I first realized that the welfare crime linkage was mistaken when studied crime rate change since World War II. Improved welfare and economic changes, especially for the 1960s and 1970s, correlated with more crime! I next recognized something was wrong with the hypothesis when I learned that Sweden's crime rates increased 5-fold and robberies 20-fold during the very years (1950 to 1980) when its Social Democratic government was implementing more and more programs to enhance equality and protect the poor [...] Other "welfare states" in Europe (such as the Netherlands) experienced at least as vast an increase in crime as the United States, whose poverty is more evident and social welfare policies are stingier. [...]
This is not an argument against fighting poverty or unemployment. Rather, it is an attempt to detach criminology from a knee-jerk link to other social injustice, inequality, government social policy, welfare systems, poverty, unemployment, and the like. To the extent that crime rates respond at all to these phenomena, they may actually increase with prosperity because there is more to steal. In any case, crime does not simply flow from other ills.”
(Felson, Marcus (2002) "Crime and everyday life" Third edition, Thousand Oaks : Sage Publications:London. Page 12-14)
A government report from Swedish crime prevention agency reached the same conclusion: "Developments in recent decades with significant efforts put into, for example, social- and labor market politics, taking place parallel with a strong increase in crime — gives a clear indication that improved economic and social conditions generally does not reduce crime." (my emphasis, SOU 1986:13 - translated from: "Utvecklingen under senare decennier med betydande insatser
Do the relationships between crime and economic equality get any more interesting when you break crime down into subtypes? Somehow, my naive imagination is that poverty would primarily motivate material theft, while wealth primarily enables psychopathic crimes (murder, rape, etc.).
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You seem to be trying to insulate yourself against accusations of "boo outgroup" by grouping "reasonable liberals" and others with "shitlibs," but still, one thing we definitely do not want to see here is casually dropping pejoratives about the outgroup like "shitlib" or "Rethuglican" or whatever else you like to call your political opponents when shitposting on laxer forums.
Well, it was posted to stupidpol which has different social norms than themotte. But I felt that the quality of the post outweighed the stylistic concerns.
I could have made some minor edits (after asking for permission), and if there's a next time, I will.
But I would hope this doesn't prevent us from engaging with the meat of this post.
The meat of the post is okay, but we don't want a trend of posting things from stupidpol or elsewhere that smuggle in pejoratives and boo-lights in a way that wouldn't pass the sniff test if posted directly. This is something we warned for back on reddit - occasionally people would find a post that had some substance but also just happened to dump heavily on the outgroup, and repost it or link it with the defense "I'm just quoting the original author."
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I assume that Swedish police are obviously used to their own traditional social milieu, which is atomized and modern, and perform policing accordingly, which also means that these policing methods will be useless against armed murderers originating from pre-modern immigrant communities based on tight extended family ties and applying their local version of Omerta.
The Police themselves know how to fight it, but it is the politicization of the police that is causing problems. Political interest on describing the problem like you did with "pre-modern" isn't always accurate. There is organized crime from former Yugoslavian countries, there are organized crime related to Turkish families, family networks from Lebanon(that was fairly modern before sectarian civil war started) are also still active.
So, as far as I can tell, there are two issues at hand:
Many of the unsolved deadly shootings are committed to avenge other unsolved deadly shootings, and everyone involved are immigrants.
The police is pressured from above to not investigate deadly shootings too much because it'd put immigrants in a bad light.
A case can go unsolved if it is not proven. They have an idea of who the shooter is and why, so they have the network but if it is not proven beyond reasonable doubt they don't go to court with it and remains 'unsolved' in the books even if they have a good suspect and motive. Mostly because of homegrown "Omerta" as you put it.
I'm with southkraut on this do you have any reference to this. Because that would need to be fixed.
See my reply to Southkraut.
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This flatters my biases, but is there any hard evidence for it?
What else am I, a right-winger with limited knowledge of Sweden, supposed to take away from this statement?:
I'm pretty sure 'politicization' here means politicization of the background of the perpetrators.
No it meant that a justice system needs to be free from political influences, but due to bad leftist political ideas that has been introduced into the police like the criminals are victims of their socio-economic status(mostly through leadership by people like Dan Eliasson, who got the ignoble mention in Stupidity Paradox of destroying the Swedish Police organizational culture). This thinking is pervasive in the leadership of the police. So taking it from the threadstart "improved economic and social conditions generally does not reduce crime." is a disproving that criminals are victims socio-economic status. And most police knows that criminals are not somehow victims of structure or systems in place, but funds are being diverted from actual policing to projects that are crime-prevention on flawed ideas. So shooting are investigated by underfunded and understaffed departments that know full well that it is organized crime fighting over illegal business dealings. Knowing full well that these are "rational economic actors" in a segregated part of society. And I might as well described Italian Mafia in New York with that sentence so it doesn't really matter where the criminals come from... it is a function of not being direct part of society you live in and having the illegal ventures being profitable enough. Both of the ends of the political spectrum are obsessed with the identity of criminals which is not helping.
In other words, it's not about immigration per se, but still about bad leftist political ideas, although different ones.
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Well, Sweden intentionally doesn't collect these kinds of stats, so it would be hard to prove. But I would suggest that the fact that they don't collect these kinds of stats is pretty damning. Where there's smoke...
So maybe not hard proof. But bayesian evidence, yes
It occurs to me that training people to take one's "I don't know" to mean "I don't want to say" - which is what one is doing every time one uses "I don't know" to mean "I don't want to say" and people find out about it - is probably going to prove costly in the long run.
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Well I have to out myself as a Swede then. Yes, the situation is dire and nobody is equipped to deal with the problem because everyone is talking that somehow the identity of the perpetrators is a factor. Somehow the problem is being framed by either this is phenomena that is because they are immigrants and can't integrate in the society so we should send them back where they come from (Sweden Democrats). The left is explaining everything with that society is the blame that they can't be integrated because systemic racism against immigrants. The leftists are running around the schools teaching the kids about the 'pyramid of discrimination and violence'. https://socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/media/universityofexeter/collegeofsocialsciencesandinternationalstudies/research/interventioninitiative/resources/PyramidDiscriminationViolence.pdf They are teaching kids at risk it is because of microaggression people are getting shot.
The worst part is that the fight against gun violence is so fucking political that when the police show up in an interview and uses the words "clan based networks" for describing the family based organized crime that is running rampant, he gets so much shit for the wording he used instead of having politicians going like "you mean that this is like the mafia?". Because that is exactly what is happening and the politics is blaming it that the violence is somehow linked that they are immigrants have more melanin in their complexion or a different religion.
That's exactly what I suspected, thanks.
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Regarding the serial killer part, I find it hard to believe there are 2000+ serial killers in the US. Does “serial killer” mean Ted Bundy types or like gang members who have been involved in a couple of drive bys?
No. It's very similar to "mass shootings" being redefined between "school shooter" and "gang shooting in a crowded nightclub" depending who wants to count what when.
Straight up, there are more of the capital S Serial Killers on TV than have ever lived.
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The relevant part of the Wikipedia article on this:
So it seems the definition is broad enough for 2000+ serial killers to be possibly present in the US. That being said, I don't really understand what this sentence is supposed to mean:
I'd guess it means that it's not that there are 2000 serial killers continuously at the prowl for victims at the moment but 2000 people who have done serial killing at some point and haven't been caught?
Or perhaps were caught for one murder and not linked to their others. There could be 5 unsolved murders where the perpetrator is in jail for his 6th.
Or in jail for something other than murder. Makes sense, thanks.
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If we use the definition of "serial killer" the author also probably uses, it's a big stretch to say that serial killers are "continuously at the prowl for victims".
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It's unidentified. If there are 25-50 active serial killers out there, there could 1950 unidentified serial killers serving life in prison for the single murder that got them caught. I admit the number seems outlandish but I expect there's a lot of serial killers that never got found out or even suspected as serial killers in the past but still did probably got caught for a single murder.
Though judging by the terminology in the OP it is probably just anyone that's committed 3 murders in sequence with time in between the crimes and not 2000 Francis Dolarhydes.
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The cited expert describes a general approach here, and this looks to be based on finding a large number of unsolved murders in a geographic cluster with a shared methodology and a low clearance rate for that type of crime. Some of these are probably not even an individual (eg, a bunch of unsolved shootings of men in Cook County), some are probably multiple serial killers (eg Fulton County Georgia), and some could reflect different behaviors by police (at least some of the "strangulation-hanging" could plausibly be suicides that were classed as unsolved murders), but it does point to some interesting stuff.
But I'm very skeptical that it could honestly give that number.
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yes, seems way too high. A google search says 25-50 active serial killers in the US, which seems way more plausible.
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I think this part of it. Unreported crime is not part of the stats.
I agree. This is why store detectives are trained to screen for everyone, not just single out people who fit a certain stereotype of a shoplifter. Yes, teens may be more likely to shoplift overall, but plenty of older people, even people in suits do to. I think the Nordic incarceration 'miracle' is somewhat oversold and I think ignores factors such as unreported crime, or other factors. I am really skeptical.
Yup, these European countries have surprisingly high levels of crime, [https://imgur.com/SnwgD83] which runs against a popular media narrative that those countries have superior criminal justice systems. Of course, some of this may be due to immigration, and crime stats may not delineate between native populations and immigrants or second generation immigrants. Pickpockets have been a problem in Europe forever.
As I said in the past here on a thread here a 3 weeks ago, I think long prison sentences are an effective deterrent against most crimes (except possibly impulsive crimes), particularly white collar and organized crime. The Five Families, from its peak of power in the early 80s, in the span of a decade dissolved by the early 90s, in large part due to huge sentencing guidelines...sentences were so long that everyone ratted on each other, bosses were sent away for life, and the crime network collapsed. Certainty of punishment matters too, if having to choose between longer sentences vs. certainty, but if sentences are too lenient than instead of being an effective deterrent it becomes a cost of doing business, which you don't want if crime prevention is your objective. This is why some major Mafia families avoided dealing with drugs, because the risk of prison was so high that it wasn't worth it.
Mafia families are very much a specific set of crime, that was crime as a business. That’s a very small percentage of a criminal population. Chicago’s murder issues are not protecting some profitable business. And those people are the types who fail the marshmallow test. So long sentence do less to prevent crime. And a broken windows theory works better.
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The idea behind highlighting quality contributions is less to honor the author than to get more people to see something worth seeing. He would be happy to see more people engage with it (for this reason, he seemed happy to have me post it here)
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The scripting that was part of adding the category selection to the report comment dialog has an error in it. Hasn't worked for me since it was implemented. Seems like an error in making sure a category was selected before letting you press the report button. A null error... what did you do?
Ah. It seems like this field doesn't exist in the DOM so when trying to set it to null for a default it shits the bed.
Should be fixed now! Thanks for the diagnosis, you were correct :)
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I made a comment about this in ye old bugs thread.
It looks like @DinoInNameOnly has made an issue for it.
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In times of extreme pressure, fairly normal people are relatively likely to commit crimes. If you are starving, theft is much more justifiable and likely than if you are doing fairly well. In the 1800s a fairly normal person could end up destitute in a way that is unlikely to happen to that person today. There were probably more orphans in 1850 who stole things but could be straightened out. The person who in modern day Sweden has to steal in order to not starve has made a series of poor choices and could find another source of food than theft. Most criminals in the modern west aren't even destitute. The gangster driving around in a car blasting music isn't turning to crime in order to survive, but because of an outlier personality. As the pressures to commit crime are reduced it is expected that criminals will become harder to rehabilitate as there will be more neurological causes to their crimes. A Soviet soldier who raped a woman in Berlin in 1945 could have had a normal psychology. The man in Berlin in 2022 who drags a random woman into the bushes in a park last night is probably severely deranged.
Therefore, long sentences become an increasingly good idea as society gets richer, as it stops people who are dysfunctional from interacting with society and stops them from reproducing.
I don't really buy this. It one of those things that sounds plausible (hard times = more crime)but possibly wrong, or unsupported by evidence. crime was higher in the 50s and 60s despite the strong economy. There is probably no correlation or a small uptick. The fact that there is so much crime during strong economic times , committed by wealthy people (Like the Enron and WorldCom frauds and also Theranos ). White collar crime is especially bad because it affects so many people (thousands of investors, pensioners, credit card fraud that affects thousands of card holders, etc.)
https://www.lawyersreadytofight.com/2020/06/15/how-economic-depressions-impact-criminal-behavior/
For example, numerous analyses have shown that during the Great Depression, the U.S.’s worst economic downturn to date, overall crime rates steadily decreased after an initial surge of violent crime at the start of the period. Crime rates continued to fall even as 68 percent of Americans were at or below the poverty line in the late 1930s.
Agree. I think long sentences are good deterrents especially against organized, white collar crime. Someone can cite a study that maybe it's not that effective, but it's probably better than shorter sentences.
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This is one of the main arguments for the death penalty and long prison sentences- an extremely small number of people are responsible for nearly all violent crime, and they’re difficult or impossible to reform, so execute them or lock them up until they’re too old to commit more crimes.
It’s an interestingly topical discussion to me because trump is now calling for the death penalty for drug dealers in emails to his supporters, making a similar argument but almost certainly with fake statistics.
The problem with the death penalty is it takes too long, because society has deemed it unacceptable some that some innocent people may die (even though innocent people die of all sorts of things; but of course, this is by decree, not an accident or unintentional). Either a life sentence or a quick death. Keeping someone on death row for decades waste of money and possibly inhumane too.
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The "irredeemable criminal" hypothesis may be interesting to discuss, but "drug dealers" are very, very bad example for that category. Most of low-level dealers aren't different from grocery store clerks - they just find whatever work they can get that pays their wages. Yes, the stuff they sell is illegal, but so what? It's just circular logic - it's bad because it's illegal, and illegal because it's bad. They are certainly not "impossible to reform" - in fact, for most of them there's not much to reform, if they had any other hustle that as available and profitable as this, but safer, they'd switch in a minute and never look back. They're certainly not "lifelong criminals" you're looking for, even though in fact they could very well spend the life on the wrong side of the law. They don't do it because of love of violence, they do it because it's the easy way - or at least one that looks easy.
Many drugs are bad because they cause addiction and death, there's nothing circular about that at all.
Many substances can cause addiction and death. They are arbitrarily classified into categories, without any regard to their actual danger (marijuana/THC/CBD is considered more dangerous than barbiturates, alcohol and nicotine, for example) and "societal danger" is assigned on the basis of that arbitrary classification, which is subsequently erased from consideration by using umbrella term "drugs" to cover the whole spectrum as if it were all the same and contained category.
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While drug dealing is more common in deprived areas, drug dealers tend to earn slightly less than the average wage iirc. Agreed that drug dealers are a bad case of unredeemable criminals; it’s simply why the death penalty was on my mind. Just saying that becoming a drug dealer is not a rational economic decision.
The real issue is a culture of criminality, but the skin colour of those it originates with is enough to put that beyond the pale.
You cannot conclude this just based on the fact that they are making less money that they could in a normal job -- unless, that is, "rational economic decision" is equated with "making the most money possible", preferences be damned.
Here's the thing: many people will simply find a job of dealing drugs to be more preferable than, say, cutting chicken all day long. I mean, think about what a typical drug dealer is actually doing when he's performing his job. If he's a street dealer, he just hangs out at a street corner all day long, shooting shit with his friends passing by, watching youtube on his phone when bored etc. If he deals out of his home, that's even better: you just hang out at your home, can play XBox all day long, you just have to answer the door every now and then. If you're delivering, it's basically same as dealing out of home, but answering calls just takes longer. In any case, either of the above is way more preferable than having your hands elbow deep in animal guts eight hours a day, or hustling in McD kitchen. Think about it: assume that legal risk is negligible. Would you prefer to serve an occasional customer from out of your home for $7/hour, or stock shelves for $8?
Now, I assume that the studies finding that drug-dealing income is often below minimum wage actually do it after taxes and transfers: note that you don't have to pay Social Security on income made from drug dealing, and it's easier to qualify for and get higher payouts from SNAP/TANF/SSI etc if your over-the-counter income is zero. This is minimum level of competency I'd expect from researchers in academia. Now that I think of, however, I am reminded of the fact that the entire notion of growing income inequality in US in recent decades is entirely false, built upon foundation of ignoring taxes and transfers, which tremendously reduce actual consumption inequality. If they can fail (or, less charitably, lie) at something so basic, they can also be similarly full of shit here as well.
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I, too, have read that street dealers make minimum wage or less (don't know if that factors in taxes). But whether it is a rational economic decision depends on whether there are opportunities for legitimate work available. The unemployment rate for African Americans 16-19, for example, is substantially higher than that of the country as a whole, and of course that only includes those in the labor force; discouraged workers are additional.
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How much externalities does drug dealing impose? Increased crime in vicinity? Probably not that much unless there are turf wars. This is why making drugs legal can fix this, by eliminating that problem of competing drug dealers/gangs. But then you end up with the increased costs such as healthcare of dealing with people who take too many drugs and either overdose or cannot function in society.
That'd be a valid argument if those people didn't do exactly the same right now. It's not like it's completely impossible to get drugs - any major city, like San Francisco, has open and well-known drug markets operating, and the authorities pretty much has long ago given up on doing something about it. They still can arbitrarily arrest people for it, but nobody is under an illusion that anything will make any dent into the availability of any drugs.
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Do you consider overdose deaths a negative externality of drug dealing? Overdose death is the number one cause of death for Americans aged 18-49. Do the drug dealers who cut their products with imprecise amounts of fentanyl have any responsibility there?
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Agree more broadly, but I don't think this is true. Most people can articulate why selling heroin is worse than selling sandwiches.
Can they articulate why selling marijuana is worse than selling vodka?
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