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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
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 "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.
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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