Comment by p-e-w
2 years ago
The scale of incarceration is still unprecedented. A reduction by 27 percent doesn't change that. Imprisonment was an extremely rare phenomenon for much of history (as was police, for that matter). Today's incarceration rates would have to be reduced by 99+% in order to reach pre-modern levels, where large cities often had only a handful of cells in total, and rural areas had none at all.
> Imprisonment was an extremely rare phenomenon for much of history (as was police, for that matter).
And crimes weren't solved, people not prosecuted, criminals not punished
For much of history life didn't even exist, that's not an argument for or against anything
Mob justice existed too. And execution for minor crime, with king's justice.
Modern western police forces, with all their foibles, are far, far, far better than mob justice.
Are people even aware of history, and how absolutely bloody it was, with an immense lack of personal rights?
Fixing what's broken now is good. Trying to pretend it is worse than what was before, is absolutely absurd and laughable.
It's not so clear cut. At least admit that a lot of thought has been given to this, none the least by Foucalt's famous essay on this topic, Discipline and Punish.
Foucalt has his critics, but it's not immediately obvious that the massive incarceration problem in some Western nations is better than public execution at the whim of monarchs. And some forms of torture, Foucalt argued, have changed from the theatrical and public to the more subdued torture of everyday lives of prison inmates.
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Murder clearance rates went DOWN last decades in USA. Less of major crime is solved.
Plus majority of it never went through tria, because trial is just too much risk. So, there are not all that many actual checks and balances
That's a multi faceted problem. Murder rates also were halves since the 80s in the US, it's not necessarily the same type of criminality
In other countries the clearance rates are as high as ever. The US is an exception in many aspects in the West, closer to third world countries depending on what metric you look at
> overall, findings showed that the clearance rate in Finland and Switzerland in the years of analysis was very high, in some years of the analysis even reaching 100 percent. Internationally, these rates are extraordinary high, even in comparison with other European countries such as Italy (67 percent and, later, 78 percent) , Estonia (80 percent), England & Wales (85 percent) and France (80 percent)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14773708187648...
To be fair, for much of history there weren't enough resources for everyone, much less for keeping people fed for free in a prison for decades. For serious crimes you just got executed as soon as possible.
We also no longer have exile as a punishment.
well, you were beaten or killed for a lot of crimes- some only perceived.
So, one may perceive incarceration as an improvement.