Actual incarceration = deterrent
The stats were not giving numbers of people just afraid of incarceration.
Right but the argument regarding prison being a deterrent is based in fear of incarceration due to large numbers of incarceration which is again supposition (not on your part) just in general.
That’s good enough while we try to catch the ones not yet in prison. Personally I believe in deportation to an island forever. But we arnt there yet.
The question that was posed is this: OP stated that incarceration is high, crime is low. Could it be that the criminals are locked up and not able to commit crime?
You people seem afraid of that question and are trying to change the subject to “fear of incarceration” being a deterrent because you like that topic better
I am not trying to change anything. I already addressed the op earlier . You asked a question or asked for an explanation of what is was meant by deterrent. I jumped in and explained. We can go back to the correlative nature of the argument from the op
No problem. There is an argument to be made that more incarceration means less crime. There are however significant holes in that argument that i noted earlier including the fact there were twice as many people in jail in 1990 and crime was never worse
I can make the argument that abortion meant fewer unwanted children meant less crime. But again that would be correlative
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There is no such thing as mass incarceration. They were all convicted and sentenced as individuals based on the crimes they commited. They were not sent to the clink as a group. Try again.
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Are the number of convicted individuals a sign of a criminally inclined populace or a sign of a misguided view of justice?
There are many reasons for the decrease in crime rate from the 80’s and 90’s to now. Trying to give all the credit to just one factor is ridiculous.
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Mass incarceration - yes its part of the equation but its not all of it. People in prison aren’t out committing new crimes.
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Elimination of leaded gasoline and lead paint. Its medically proven that lead toxicity increases aggressive behavior in humans and animals and this never goes away. Its statistically proven that most crime is committed by males aged 16-25. Leaded gasoline and lead paint were eliminated in the mid 70’s and the crime rate began to decrease roughly 16-25 years afterwards, in other words right around the time a new generation of people were reaching peak crime years but were no longer as prone to aggression due to not having been exposed to as much lead as prior generations. Less aggressive tendencies equals less crime.
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Legalized abortion. The pro life side gets upset over this but data doesn’t have an agenda, it just is what it is. This is not an argument for abortion or against, its just a realistic statistical look at the consequences of legalized abortion. Children who aren’t wanted and are born into bad situations are more likely to grow up to be criminals. Abortion was legalized nationally in 1973 but state wise it was legal in some prior to that. You can see the same trend in each state roughly 18 years after legalization as you do with lead paint in that crime begins to fall.
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Second point was intriguing to read being so unique to the subject. I’m curious to know if you came to that opinion on your own or if you have a source for it.
Right. So to give a really simplistic example, let’s say you have a society of 1,000 people. 10 are criminals. You lock 5 of them up. You’re not stopping crime in its totality but you just slashed it in half simply because half of the criminals are no longer roaming the streets.
It would be just the opposite.
Why ?
More incarcerations would be an indication that more crimes are happening.
Or… incarceration results in criminals being off the street ergo less crime
hypothetical:
In 1999 there was X amount of crime
In 2000 there was less crime committed than in 1999 but more people arrested for that smaller number of crimes.
We are jailing more people for less crime, that’s not right and something we criticize other countries like China for.
If you have statistics that prove specifically that, sure. That’s different than just saying there’s more people in prison now.
Are you seriously unaware that is what’s happening or are you just trying to encourage debate.
less crime should be followed by fewer incarcerations. It’s not because prisons are big business, and we have been systemically chaining the criminal justice system to result in MORE incarcerations even though crime is down.
Ok I don’t think we are going to get anywhere with this. It’s the chicken and egg argument that never ends 
