Talk:United States incarceration rate

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Incorrect numbers

The second paragraph is all messed up. (1) 7.2 million is not 1 in 32 of the U.S. population (2) Parole and Probation is not "held by the judicial system." This is much worse than non-neutral. This is blatantly incorrect. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Edibobb (talk • contribs) 05:07, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

I suspect that it should read "1 in 32 of the adult U.S. population". The phrase "held by the judicial system" is technically wrong, perhaps this should be replaced by "is under some form of judicial restraint". Conrad Leviston (talk) 11:45, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, it's 2 years later and this blatant error is still here. I'll try to get some people to pay attention to it.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:00, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, can you point out the error more specifically? The current US population is 314 million. That would mean that 1 in 32 of the US population is 9.8 million, and approximating one in 32 adults with 314M * ((70-18)/70) / 32 yeilds about 7.2. What are you proposing changing?174.56.55.37 (talk) 06:24, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

This is no longer in the second paragraph, but it is still in the article -- with the logical flaw noted almost seven years ago. I changed it to "1 in every 32 adult Americans", per Wikipedia:Be bold. This seems to be correct -- or at least more internally consistent than before. DavidMCEddy (talk) 02:09, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

Misleading and inaccurate data on US - England + Wales comparisons

In England and Wales - not counting Scotland and Northern Ireland - the ratio doesn't include the effects of mass immigration, where the size of the middle class has vastly increased in relation to the underclass and lower classes, from where the majority of prisoners in England originate. This number must have also dropped since the New Labour regime left power. Many books and human rights groups have consistently said that the UK prison ratio was level with that of the US between around 2003 and 2011 (if not still), and that projected figures saw a drop in the US prison ratio, while the UK's prison ratio was still increasing.

My biggest gripe about this article, other than the typical 'lets forget Britain, the US must be worse' idiocy, is that the graph "United States is the World's Leading Jailer" was sourced from the British Government's HOME OFFICE. Which is a bit like asking a murderer 'who was more guilty - you or that other guy?'. The British Home Office is the authority responsible for the mass imprisonment of English + Welsh citizens. So it is hardly surprising that they will paint the US and Russia to be far worse. Did you not notice the agglomeration of England/UK on the graph into a "European" average? How can anybody be that naive? 'Europe' isn't even a federal state yet, so 'European' statistics are outright propaganda. So if the prison ratio in, say, Sweden, is 1 prisoner for every 5,000, and in England + Wales it's at least 1 prisoner for every 649, that means that the British Home Office (the source of this data) can avoid putting themselves as the world's leading jailer, simply by averaging around 28 completely separate sovereign countries. Who would be so stupid as to select such biased and manipulative data? Please delete it.

Also, in the US, the rate of imprisonment from the figures given in the article is not 1 in 32, but 1 in 132. Although mass imprisonment exists in the US, it has for many years been worse in the UK. Neither should draw attention away from eachother, but the 21st century trend to ignore the holocaustal atrocities in post-9/11 England because there are more Americans to complain about America, is extremely damaging when statistics are skewed for the purpose. If America is the second largest jailer, that is still something that must be passionately addressed. There's no need to do a disservice to the victims of Anthony Blair's apartheid in England and Wales by reaching for unqualified superlatives. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.110.239.227 (talk) 17:00, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Proposed merger tag deleted

I have done so because:

1. The editor who placed the tags did not respond to my request for input; and
   
2. I don't believe that a merger is warranted.
   --NBahn (talk) 22:18, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Merge tag is back

Suggested merge with Incarceration in the United States, done as a hit and run with no discussion added here. This article is fine. The other one is supposed to be more general, maybe with a single section about rates that summarizes this article and points here. But every section in that article seems to return to the rate issue. Thundermaker (talk) 15:00, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

I just put a Merge tag on both articles. As I noted in Talk:Incarceration in the United States, there is enough material for two articles. However, I think there should be more clarity of what each covers, less overlap and more cross linking. DavidMCEddy (talk) 21:40, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Neutrality

The tone of this entry seems to suggest an indictment of United States policies on criminal confinement. Wperdue (talk) 05:42, 13 February 2009 (UTC)wperdue

I agree: in my opinion, the whole article sounds like a negative comparison juxtaposing the United States and other countries rather than providing factual information about the article. I think the article was just started this way, if you look at Goherd0708's original revision (not meaning to sound like I'm blaming anyone). I think that the whole article should be rewritten so that it provides facts, not opinions, although it appears that nothing major has happened to the page for quite some time. 67.180.128.108 (talk) 02:31, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly disagree. "Lack of bias" is completely different than "Lack of tone". For example coverage of World War II that took great lengths to avoid showing concentration camp murders in a bad light would be inexcusably inappropriate. Similarly, an article about incarceration that fails to hit us over the head with "Hey, you are ten times as likely to be in prison if you live in the US as if you live in Japan!" is doing the public a disservice.174.56.55.37 (talk) 06:40, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Imprisonments target men

The fact that American imprisonments target men is left out. The likelihood of being imprisoned while visiting the USA may not seem imminent, but if in fact the almost exclusivity with which men are imprisoned is taken into consideration, it becomes clear that travel to the USA is far more dangerous than the current aggregated statistics show. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.58.46.150 (talk) 03:21, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

While it is true that the US Justice System is biased against men, had you thought that this is mostly because men commit the vast majority of crimes? Surely you are not claiming that men and women equally commit prison-worthy crimes? I also fail to see why this should make the United States a dangerous place to visit. Foreign criminals are more likely to be deported to their home country than to be imprisoned, though it does happen. And there are several first-world, industrialized Western nations with higher crime rates...England, for example. And one is also exceedingly unlikely to be caught in a riot, which managed to happen on the first day of my trip to Germany. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.30.14.50 (talk) 14:52, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Entirely agree, statistically males make up 98% of the prison population in the Western world, if not the entire planet. It is perhaps the single most unequivocally racist/genocidal statistic in western society. As such, it would be bizarre not to include it. Hypothetical example: If 98% of Coltan comes from Dem Rep of Congo, then an article about Coltan should say either in paragraph 1 or 2, 98% of x is found in y", as it is an inherent characteristic of the subject.

My opinion: The focus on race is a deceitful and propagandist campaign to distract from the actual demography of prisons; whatever proportion of incarcerated people in America, the UK etc are dark-skinned, will pale in comparison to the number 98%, which is far more revealing and urgent to address. It certainly warrants inclusion in the opening paragraph, i.e. "As of x statistics, males make up 98% of the imprisoned population."

The response above mine (second response) is imbecilic because it does not take into account the fact that throughout history, laws have been written to criminalize instinctual male behavior, whereas absolutely no instinctual female behaviors (with the exception of prostitution, which has been legalized this century), such as class discrimination for sexual selection, deceit and manipulation, hypergamy, murder during menstruation, many cases of infanticide, inciting suicide, irresponsible motherhood/refusal to have abortion despite a clear lack of means to raise a child, inciting violence through sexual bribery, marriage for purely financial/citizenship gain, inciting gender/class hatred (misandry and fascism), and so on, are entirely and completely 100% legal. There are absolutely no laws that criminalize these, and any and every woman can commit them with absolutely no legal repercussions whatsoever. However, if a male wants to make love to his girlfriend and she is, say 15 or 16, he could go to prison for child rape. I.e. the number 98% doesn't come from a 'men just do more illegal stuff' basis, but from the origin that what is illegal, has been so to imprison all male threats who deviate from the status quo. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.110.239.227 (talk) 16:13, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

I found the "Causes" section to be quite biased. It quickly changed from a section that informed on the causes of US incarceration rates to a discussion of race inequality in the US. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.169.160.20 (talk) 06:00, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Nonsense sentence, nonsense citations

On the other hand, it should be noted that for example Japan and Sweden have applied zero tolerance for illicit drugs at the same time as they have few people in prison and low drug use, so the connection between drug laws and number of prisoners is not simple.[10][11]

1. Nowhere does the article state that harsh drug laws increase drug use. 2. The connection between drug laws and the number of prisoners IS indeed simple. If you have high rates of drug use and zero-tolerance laws are enforced, the number of prisoners will go up. (See USA) If the number of users is low anyway, zero-tolerance laws won't have a great impact. (See Sweden)

Re Sweden: I am not sure that they mean the same thing we do by "zero-tolerance". From Drug_policy_of_Sweden: While using illegal substances is a crime, personal usage does not result in jail time if it is not in combination with driving a car 174.56.55.37 (talk) 06:50, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

(And the quoted articles consist of a) A speech by a representative of a country that is one of the biggest proponents of a prohibitionist policy, and b) an article on the head of an organization that is sponsored primarily by countries that endorse zero-tolerance drug-policy. His positions are in stark contrast to those of more import U.N. bodies like the WHO or UNAIDS.)

--Hisredrighthand (talk) 14:39, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

"United States Incarceration Rate" is not a category in itself. If we are comparing the US to other countries, then we are talking about incarceration rates in general or global incarceration rates. Aecwriter Morgan Jones 18:49, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

The Japanese and Swedish government see the lower drug use and the much lower incarceration rate in those countries as a long term effect of strict drug laws. Not so long sentences as in the U.S but up to 10-14 years imprisonment is practiced, in combination with other methods. This situation has continued for decades. The Japanese and Swedish example clearly shows that there is no simple cause effect relation between strict drug laws and the incarceration rate. So an alternative and possible logic conclusion is that what is missing in the U.S is not drug legalization but resources for all these other methods. The present drug tzar has, as mentioned i the beginning of the text, showed clear interest for other methods, that not include drug legalization. Dala11a (talk) 21:37, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

What about Kazakhstan, Belarus, Russia, Singapore and other countries that have both zero tolerance on drugs and just like USA, have very high incarceration rates? To pick examples the way you do, just to prove a given point, is dishonest. Steinberger (talk) 23:26, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

I know very little about the standard on for example treatment for drug dependence and the anti-drug policy in past and today in Kazakhstan, Belarus, Russia or Singapore. Someone else must write about those countries. But that is not a reason to ignore that both Japan and Sweden have a low incarceration rate combined with restrictive drug laws. Dala11a (talk) 19:50, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes and they are both countries where the market with not-yet outlawed designer drugs flourishes. Especially Sweden. I don't know what your angle is, but certain aspects of the problem _are_ simple. A part of drug use is hedonistic, the rest is pathological. With zero-tolerance you scare away most of the hedonists while robbing sick people of their liberty. In Switzerland, addiction and especially opioid addiction is treated as a health issue. It's also nowerdays seen as a health issue by the general public, not as something daring or glamorous. "Hedonistic" heroin use there has almost been eradicated. Sick people get the help they need and end up being less of a burden for society. --Hisredrighthand (talk) 13:46, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

I am originally from Russia, and I can tell that antidrug laws in Russia and Belrus is about the same as in Europe in general, but police is much more occupied with alcohol crimes and less responsive to drug reports. Not sure why Russia and Belarus are chosen as an example of zero-tolerance. I think high incarceration rates in Russia are more due to the long terms then war on drugs. Actually recently president Medvedev cut in half mandatory sentences by removing the minimum terms on most crimes and lowering the maximum terms. I hope the incarceration rate in Russia will go down dramatically very soon. Innab (talk) 22:55, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Russia is usually chosen as an example of prohibitionist drug policy because it is one of the few countries that have outlawed methadone substitution and related, evidence-based treatment options. --Hisredrighthand (talk) 13:45, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Primary sources

I see a lot of USDOJ papers used as sources in the reference section. These are WP:PRIMARY sources, which "must be used with care, because it is easy to misuse them." Are they justified here? Thundermaker (talk) 00:45, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Deleting by user Steinberger

User Steinberger deleted the following part of the text below claming that it was original synthesis, not in the sources. But that is simply not true, see for example [1] or look on the diagram in in the article.

"Before 1971, different stops on drugs had been implemented in federal laws for more than 50 years (for e.g. since 1914, 1937 etc.) with only a very small increase of inmates per 100 000 citizens. U.S. incarceration rates between 1880 and 1970 ranged from about 100 to 200 prisoners per 100,000 people. During the first 9 years after 1971, when president Nixon coined the expression 'War on Drugs,' statistics show only a minor increase of the number of imprisoned to 220 per 100 000. Around 1980 the United States had 40,000 people in prison for drug crimes. After 1980 started the number of people in prison to grow much faster than the population. "

Dala11a (talk) 22:11, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Huh? So you mean that the diagram explcitly state that "different stops on drugs had been implemented in federal laws for more than 50 years" while having limited effect on the incarceration rate? No, it obviously does not. Neither does the "Prison Math" article from Reason Magazine. And morover, even though Nixon conied the term, it was Reagan that really started the "War on drugs". Nixon had harsh rethoric, but the public sentiment was not favorable for a outright "war". There where no sense of real urgency until later. The book that is used as a source for this in the article - The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindess - date the real outbreak of the war to 1982. Steinberger (talk) 22:43, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

In this film from 1972 Nixon state that the federal budget for "fight against dangerous drugs" had increased 7 times in his period. [2]. That was really a significant change that it is POV to ignore.Dala11a (talk) 11:25, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

This article is about incarceration and not spending. If this article was about the War on Drugs or US drug policies in general, it would be POV to ignore it. Steinberger (talk) 12:11, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

And also, you really must stop using primary sources and figures from secondary sources to make points that the sources don't explicitly support. It is dangerous and can lead to wrong conclusions. As in this case, where you point to a interview with Nixon to try to demonstrate shift in policy. Very well. However, a few years later Carter became president with a platform that included decriminalization of marijuana. [3] The video-clips demonstrate the different views among politicians at the time. And the sides largely balanced each other out. As little as Carter could decriminalize marijuana, Nixon could start the drug war. Steinberger (talk) 15:04, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

There are, as you probably already know, more than 100 000 web pages about the 40th anniversary for the start of the "War on Drugs" in the beginning of the 1970s. You are deeply dishonest when you pretend that you have not read about that anniversary. Instead you pick a source that change the definition for the "War on drugs" to something (what?) that started the same year (surprise!) as the fast rise in incarnated per 100 000 citizens. Then you state you have a source. Very far from the idea with Wikpedia. Dala11a (talk) 19:01, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Read the source. It say Nixon used the phrase "War on drugs". It also say that US media uses the term, not for Nixon's policies, but for the shift that came with Reagan. Steinberger (talk) 23:47, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

References

Concentration of ownership of the media

I am not one to delete sections, but the relevance of this is so unclear I think it needs to go up on blocks while we try to figure out if it has an engine:

One thread of research has identified the increasing concentration of ownership of the media and the resulting reduction in investigative journalism as a major driver of the dramatic increase in prison population in the U.S.: Investigative journalism is very expensive, because most targets of investigative journalism have ways to retaliate against the media, while poor people do not. This means that poor people can be slandered with impunity, while stories of questionable events involving advertisers must (a) be verified very carefully and (b) have limited run, because the major media conglomerates have a conflict of interest in reporting anything that might affect an advertiser. It is much cheaper and safer to report the police blotter.

Now, I don't have the book, so I can't really fix this from the source, but as written, I don't see a clear relevance. What bothers me is, there is a relevance here, but reading it, I can't even hypothesize what the authors of the book (or one essay in it?) meant - were they saying that journalists demonize the poor and get harsh laws passed, that they should be doing more to help prove some defendants innocent, and what does under-reporting of events involving advertisers have to do with any of it? Wnt (talk) 13:12, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

It's relatively simple; the book is a piece postmodern nonsense which basically confuses correlations (which are a dime a dozen, you can make them up yourself with a selection of data-sets) with causes. In other words, dressed up with trendy verbiage, but an example of the post-hoc fallacy writ large. Wasn't it Goebels who had some choice words about the bigger the post hoc fallacy the easier it was to get the masses to swallow it? The whole section is so specious, it should be deleted. Plus, think about the way the writer introduces it: one thread of research. An encyclopedia is not the appropriate location for one thread of research. When others have confirmed the research, added to it, maybe even subtracted here and there, when it's been worked on for a while, and has a distinct place in the roudelay of solutions to this particular sociological puzzle (if it is a puzzle), when the community of researchers has come to a consensus about it, then it qualifies as knowledge, and then it has a place in an encyclopedia. But not until. The appropriate place for it until then is in a peer reviewed journal, or in a book. I say again, it should be deleted.Theonemacduff (talk) 05:13, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

I don't think the section is necessarily a dead-end, but it at least needs to explicitly relate itself to the topic: How do these trends in the media lead to higher incarceration rates? It's implied, but an encyclopedia needs to be explicit. Also, yes, it'd be great if anyone has the capability to assess whether this is a widely-held view or a widely questioned one. And make clear which it is.

--Qwerty0 (talk) 18:22, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

References

Dodgy representations

This article reads " In the twenty-five years since the passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, the United States penal population rose from around 300,000 to more than two million." For which the footnote reads, "Alexander, Michelle (2010). The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: The New Press. p. 6."

I looked into Alexander's book, and found that the text on the cited page actually reads, "In less than thirty years, the US penal population exploded from around 300,000 to more than 2 million, with drug convictions accounting for the majority of the increase." Alexander doesn't mention anything about when her period of thirty years begins or ends so I was wondering how whoever authored that bit of the wiki article dated it begin with the Anti-Drug Abuse Act.

But the plot thickens. It struck me that Alexander's "less than thirty years" with no specific dates was pretty dodgy as well. So I looked into her citation for this statistic and found it leads to page 33 of Marc Mauer's Race To Incarcerate. I followed that and found that "in absolute terms, there was a significant increase in the number of violent offenders (my emphasis) who were imprisoned during this time, rising from 246,200 in 1985 to 589,100 in 2000." Perhaps this figure for violent offenders is where Alexander derives her "around 300,000" from? Because Mauer is referring to a table on the previous page, which gives the total number of prison inmates in the year 1985 as 451,812 - quite a far cry from "around 300,000".

What reason would Alexander have to misrepresent the numbers? Perhaps she refers to a different period of "less than thirty years"? But that wouldn't be backed up by her citation. Did she simply goof? Where can we obtain ACURATE, RAW DATA on the prison population, year by year? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.155.99.236 (talk) 02:54, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Orphaned references in United States incarceration rate

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of United States incarceration rate's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "b02001":

• From Race and ethnicity in the United States: "B02001. RACE - Universe: TOTAL POPULATION". 2008 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates. United States Census Bureau. Retrieved 2010-02-28.
• From White American: U.S. Census Bureau; 2008 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates. Retrieved 2009-11-07

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 18:07, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Subsection title on media

User:Jeffq changed a subsection heading from "Editorial Policies of the Major Media" to "Relationship with media reporting". I don't understand the logic here.

This body of research insists that shifts in editorial policies of the mainstream media drove this increase in incarceration rates.

I'm changing this back again to "Editorial policies of major media": "Media reporting" sounds too vague to me. "Editorial policies of major media" is more precise.

The term "Relationship to" does not seem to add anything: the other subsection headings could similarly be preceded by "Relationship to", all without changing the meaning and, from my perspective, without impacting readability. William Strunk in The Elements of Style famously commanded us to "Use no unnecessary words." DavidMCEddy (talk) 11:21, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

My edit was originally to do case fixes (which DavidMCEddy has now done for the earlier title anyway). My wording concern was my belief that section titles should read like an organic part of the subject, almost as if the article title were prefacing the section title; e.g., ""United States incarceration rate and [the] editorial policies of the major media" or "United States incarceration rate and [its] relationship with media reporting". Now that I spell this out, I'm not particularly satisfied with my wording, nor do I have any alternative I find better than the once and current one. Apologies for the distraction. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 06:43, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

No apology required. Thank you for your many contributions to Wikipedia. The Wikimedia ethic commands us to "Be bold but not reckless." I know my prose can always be improved -- and I found changes that I hope improved it while trying to understand your comments. I don't like to revert something without trying to understand more about the motivation for the change. Sometimes such an effort leads to further improvement. At minimum, I wanted to give you the courtesy of an opportunity to explain your concern with my choice of words. Thanks again for your time and effort in improving the quality of Wikipedia and its value for humanity. DavidMCEddy (talk) 07:04, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Percentages of Prisoners, Populations and Rates

Using the data from reference 2 for Oct 2013, namely,

..................Prisoners (MM)....Population (MM).....Incarc. Rate per 100,000

US.....................2.24.....................312.72........................716.0

World................10.2......................7,100.........................143.7

Ratios (%)........21.95......................4.40..........................498

Both the 5% and 25% numbers in the initial paragraph are more correctly 4% or 4.4% and 22% or 22.0%, respectively. Possibly, the 5% and 25% have been used (by others as well) so that one could more easily (in one's head) come to the correct ratio of the factor of 5 (498%) for the incarceration rates?

AikBkj (talk) 18:27, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

The 5% and 25% numbers were true when US incarceration peaked in 2008. See this page for charts and info:

http://cannabis.wikia.com/wiki/Number_incarcerated_in_the_USA_peaked_in_2008

I don't edit this Wikipedia article here much except to update or add charts. So if any of the info and links in the above-linked article is useful others may have to add it, or other sources, to the article here on Wikipedia. The chart for 2008 is on the Commons: commons:File:Total US inmates 2007-8.gif

Incarceration peaked in 2008. Total correctional population peaked in 2007. See this timeline table: commons: File:US adult correctional population timeline.gif.

I went ahead and updated some charts and info. --Timeshifter (talk) 21:34, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Incarceration peaked in 2008, not 2014

I removed the sentence in the lead about incarceration declining in 2014. It actually started declining in 2009.

"Prison and jail population" section has the info and references on incarceration peaking in 2008. So to avoid duplication I took it all out of the lead. --Timeshifter (talk) 01:51, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Suggest merging this into Incarceration in the United States

To consolidate discussion let's discuss this at Talk:Incarceration in the United States. --Timeshifter (talk) 20:19, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

Added a file from Commons

Felony Sentences in State Courts, study by the United States Department of Justice.

I've added this image from Commons to this article.

Feel free to use it how you like.

I hope it's a helpful source of information.

Thank you,

— Cirt (talk) 19:41, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Adult incarceration image

We need a new version of the chart of incarceration rate per 100,000 by state here:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c4/US_Adult_Incarceration_Rate_by_State.svg

The current version of the image has too similar color gradients per each step, which makes it very difficult to tell one from the other, especially for those with poor color acuity. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.217.26.123 (talk) 09:23, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Please see the talk page for the chart:

commons:File talk:US Adult Incarceration Rate by State.svg --Timeshifter (talk) 15:59, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

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The caption with the "graph of the incarceration rate under state and federal jurisdiction per 100,000 population 1925–2008" concludes with, "The male incarceration rate (top line) is 15 times the female rate (bottom line)." Where'd the 15 come from? The text says that as of Dec. 31, 2010, "8.7% are female prisoners". However, (1-.087)/.087 = 10.5, not 15. The 15 may be some average or median over the entire period. From my eye, it looks like the M/F ratio prior to 1975 was much higher, because the female rate was so much lower.

I am rewording that part to just say, "Males (top line). Females (bottom line). Combined (middle line)." Another option is to just delete that entirely. However, I think legend on the graph is too small for people without 20-20 vision to read it easily. DavidMCEddy (talk) 22:12, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

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Racialization and reform error

The section on "Racialization and Reform Error" makes questionable claims that seem inconsistent with better sourced claims made elsewhere in this article.

The first paragraph seems to start fine: "It is important to understand the background of the war on drugs. The earliest influences can be seen in early Chinese immigration for railroad buildings. ... One of the first acts against drugs was the Opium Exclusion Act of 1909. It prohibited the smoking of opium, ingested by a vast percentage of caucasian housewives in America, but smoked mainly by Asian American immigrants coming to build the railroads. These immigrants were targeted with anti-Asian sentiment as America had a stigma that they came solely to take away jobs."

Then it begins to drift into grounds for which an adequate citation is not provided: "This continued with African Americans and cocaine and led to the cycle that we now see today."

I plan to change this to read, "This continued with higher penalties for crack cocaine, consumed primarily by African Americans, than powder, consumed more by the white middle-class, and contributed to the five-fold increase in incarcerations seen in the plot above. For instance, the disproportionate number of African Americans compared to other racial groups in the United States that are arrested or put in jail. Figures from 2008 offer a better illustration of the situation with 28% of arrests involving African Americans and African American men comprising almost half of the current incarcerated population in the United States."

Delete this figure, because it's redundant with a figure provided above and seems not to be as well sources.

I plan to delete the figure, because it does NOT seem to add information not present in the figure above, and the source for the figure I'm deleting is not sufficiently specific to support replication.

As of 2017-10-02, the article continues, "The Sentencing Reform Act emerged as the ultimate culmination to this. By going tough on crimes, the United States federal government tried to increase consistency on federal sentencing. This stemmed from a tough on crime campaign headed largely by Ronald Reagan. The Crime rate was steadily dipping by upwards of an average of 8 percent each year, and 12 percent in violent crime in the years preceding the bill pointing to numerous questions at the true motive of the bill."

What data claim that the crime rate was increasing? The research reports I've found most credible, e.g, by Sacco cited elsewhere in this article, claim that the crime rate was steady -- as judged by the National Victimization Survey, which is more credible than the Uniform Crime Reports that are more subject to changes in the propensities of local police departments to report to the FBI crimes that have been reported to them.

"Many experts, such as Michael C. Campbell, a doctorate in the department of criminology at the University of Missouri- St.Louis, declares that the scheme of a war on crime was used for political action. Fear was created among the citizens of the state and thus the country looked to him to keep their doors safe. The effects of this bill on the incarceration are shown in the diagram to the right. The effects on crime per 100,000 capita released by the department of homeland security states that violent crimes remained to steadily decrease; however, in the 10 years following the bill, crimes such as rape, theft, robbery, and murder grew by 6, 4, 3, and 2 percent, respectively. It is important to understand the political domination that a war on drugs and crime created, and thus shapes the prison industrial complex today. While incarceration stays at an all time high, crime was actually decreasing."

I don't see a citation for this work by Campbell. The claim sounds questionable to me in comparison with other sources I've seen. I plan to delete it.

I also plan to delete the remaining two paragraphs in this section, because no citation is given for them:

"The motivation for these acts can also be looked at from an economical lens as well. Private prison companies have 3.3 billion dollars in yearly revenue, once growing by over 175% yearly. Buying and trading goods produced by those in prisons stems from exploiting prisoners as free labor. The running of prisons costs numerous sums of money for American tax payers: 31,087 dollars per year per prisoner, just 3 thousand shy of the national average salary. Companies benefit greatly from the use of these prisoners and the construction of prisons and their infrastructure. This causes more and more to be invested in prisons rather than reform programs to help guide individuals out of prison. Many towns have spawned as "prison-towns" in the last 70 years. These towns are run solely by the prison, and to keep its economy flourishing, jobs must be readily available. They solved this by building a prison and incarcerating more individuals for nonviolent crimes. With more prisoners comes more responsibility to hold the prisoners which creates more jobs. This scheme creates a vicious cycle of incarceration that is also duly responsible for the growth in the incarceration rate. Many experts believe the for-profit private prison expansion motivated by economic benefit, laid down by the foundation of the war on drugs, is the reason why the incarceration rate will remain to increase in the coming years.

"It is important to analyze this from a logical perspective as well. Matthew De Michael (Ph. D from William Penn University) frankly states the issues with the American people regarding the recognition of the corruption hidden within the modern era of prisons. He states that the system has a fatal flaw, and though he believes parts are necessary, he notes that money is not invested in reform programs to help get prisoners out of jail and off with jobs. With prisoners coming out of prison with a felony, their chances of receiving a job, experts estimate, are reduced by 78%. To make ends meet, they will fall back into the cycle of drug dealing, and with laws continuing to become stricter and stricter, they will come back to prison. This makes for over-crowding and the ultimate expansion of jails."

No citation is given for these two paragraphs.

Secondarily, I find confusing the section heading, "Racialization and Reform Error": Most importantly, I don't understand what is meant by "reform error". Cosmetically, Wikipedia tends not to use initial caps in headings like this except for the first word. I plan to shorten it to just "Racialization".

If you find any of these changes inappropriate, please provide clear, relevant citations -- and make an appropriate effort to reconcile anything with the above "graph of the incarceration rate under state and federal jurisdiction per 100,000 population 1925–2008." DavidMCEddy (talk) 02:35, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

References

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Why are more citations needed?

@Coffeeandcrumbs:

I'm reverting your addition of {{more citations needed|date=April 2019}}, because it's not sufficiently specific. The article currently has 77 Notes. I'm confused. DavidMCEddy (talk) 20:35, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

There are at least 5 entire paragraphs that are uncited and many more with large portions not covered by a citation to reliable source.--- Coffeeandcrumbs 20:44, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

@Coffeeandcrumbs: Thanks for the clarification. Could you please tag the paragraphs and sections you find inadequate with, e.g, {{cn}}?

Without that, it will be much harder for anyone to respond constructively to your concerns.

This is the logic behind the concerns expressed in "Wikipedia:DRIVEBY".

This article is over a decade old, with first edit:2008-05-01 21:33. A blanket tag like {{more citations needed|date=April 2019}} added to an article of this size that is over a decade old seems to me to add more confusion than clarity.

Thank you for your concern about the quality of this article. I hope you will forgive me for pushing you to be more specific in describing your concerns in a way that can better contribute to actual improvements. I am again reverting this addition, because I find it too vague to be useful. DavidMCEddy (talk) 04:04, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Updated studies re. 20 v. 22 percent?

@X-Editor: On 2021-04-13T02:55:06 you tagged the statement, "While the United States represents about 4.4 percent of the world's population, it houses around 22 percent of the world's prisoners." with {{Update inline|date=April 2021}}, saying, "There have been updated studies done since that say the figure has fallen to 20 percent".

If you know about such a study, it would help if you updated the figure with a new citation yourself. I know that's a little more work. However, I don't know this field well enough to easily find the reference that you seem to know.

Thanks for your support of Wikipedia. DavidMCEddy (talk) 03:21, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

I’m currently editing on mobile since my laptop broke, so I probably won’t pursue that until my laptop is fixed. Thanks for your comment tho. X-Editor (talk) 05:41, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

@X-Editor: You have my sympathies. I currently had major problems with my primary laptop. The repair took weeks, multiple visits to the Apple store, and reformatting my hard drive. DavidMCEddy (talk) 10:59, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the sympathy. X-Editor (talk) 16:20, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

CCA's awareness that reducing crime could threaten their profitability

@Crewlonster: Thank you for your efforts to improve this article. I feel a need to revert the deletion of the quote from CCA's SEC report in 2010:

Our growth … depends on a number of factors we cannot control, including crime rates … [R]eductions in crime rates … could lead to reductions in arrests, convictions and sentences requiring incarceration at correctional facilities.

I've heard many people claim that lobbying by for-profit prisons has been a primary driver of the 5-fold increase in the incarceration rate between 1975 and 2000. I think that's not correct, because the increase in for-profit prisons followed rather than led that 5-fold increase, from the information I've seen. However, it does seem correct that CCA and other for-profit prison companies have lobbied to increase rather than decrease recidivism and sentences, at the expense of public safety.

Accordingly, I'm reverting this one edit. Comments? Thanks, DavidMCEddy (talk) 15:37, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

@DavidMCEddy: I think that's fair and I appreciate the explanation. I've been taking a close look at this article and will probably make additional changes, but feel free to reach out if you disagree with any of my other edits. Thank you! Crewlonster (talk) 13:28, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

References

"by 2019 it had fallen to 419 per 100,000.[1]"

The opening sentence of the article states that the incarceration rate in the US had fallen to 419 per 100,000 in 2019, citing a DoJ report. The report however seems to only include sentenced prisoners in state and federal prisons - the World Prison Brief reports a higher rate of 629 per 100,000 (for end of 2019) which includes pre-trial detainees / remand prisoners (which I'd assume are imprisoned in local jails - subtracting these gives the cited rate of 419 per 100,000). Given that the comparison section and the Wikipedia article listing countries by incarceration rate both use WPB figures, I suggest that the opening sentence either be changed to stating that the incarceration rate had fallen to 629 per 100,000 in 2019 (and changing the citation) or clarifying that the rate of 419 per 100,000 excludes those imprisoned in local jails.

Pasta Enjoyer (talk) 03:58, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. Yes: Would you mind changing that so it reads something "419 in state and federal prisons per 100,000", citing that source?

I once spent hours maybe days looking for figures that included local jails and finally gave up. I think the most important message to be gotten from this this and other sources about this issue is the role of the media in the "social construction of crime", as documented in the work by Gary Potter and others, some of which is cited in this article. Having the history back to 1925 makes that point very effectively, at least for me. (Other people seem not to have been moved as much by that observation as I have, however.) Since I failed to find older figures for jails, I finally decided to ignore the jails and base my analysis on the state and federal numbers only. DavidMCEddy (talk) 04:53, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Disputed Accuracy and Relevance for Two Non-Violent Imprisonment Claims

Accuracy

Here is the reference provided for both of the claims below, specifically tables 8 and 9 on page 8.

(1) "As of 2006, 49.3% of state prisoners, or 656,000 individuals, were incarcerated for non-violent crimes."

(2) "As of 2008, 90.7% of federal prisoners, or 165,457 individuals, were incarcerated for non-violent offenses."

I can't locate the data supporting these claims in the tables and pages provided. Moreover, I can't find explicit evidence for these claims in the entire source itself. The information within the source is concrete providing raw numbers rather than interpretative data like graphs. This should make it rather easy to locate these claims. However, none of the numbers or percentages provided are in the source. For Claim 1 above, I cannot find "49.3%" or "656,000" in the entire source itself. Likewise, for Claim 2 above, I also cannot find "90.7" or "165,457" in the entire document itself.

Searching through the entire source, I found one could derive the "656,000" and "49%" numbers in Claim 1 above by combining property and drug offense categories from Appendix Table 15 on page 37 of the source. However, as the table citations for the Appendix Table 15 indicate, this table provides an estimated number.

Relevance

The section is about drug related imprisonment and this subsection specifically calls out how courts were given more discretion when it came to drug-related sentencing in the 2000's. However, the unverified data above is for all non-violent offenses. This too easily suggests that these unverified numbers for all non-violent crimes are for drug related crimes, which is one type of non-violent crime.

If, as I suggested above, one uses the Appendix Table 15 on page 37 as the source of this data, then the estimated number of drug related prisoners in 2006 would 265,800 or 20% of the prison population, which is only 40% of the the 656,000 - less than half - of the unverified number provided.

Reasonable Corrections and Suggestions

First, I'm going to remove the source altogether since its source cannot be explicitly verified. Second, I would also suggest that if source can be accurately interpreted from Appendix Table 15 on page 37, then these claims should be rewritten to indicate that the numbers supporting these two claims are estimated, as the data indicates. Third, I would suggest the data specifically reference drug related crime, which is a type of non-violent crime, and not violent crime as a whole, as the is both misleading and contextually inaccurate. Otherwise, one could create a new section in the article targeting non-violent crime itself. SourceDude (talk) 18:27, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

I've added a section to replace this one with current statistics from verified sources:

As of December 2017, only 14.4% of state prisoners were serving sentences for a drug offenses with 3.7% of serving for possession and 10.8% serving for trafficking, other drug offenses, and unspecified drug offenses. Time served for drug related offenses are also amongst the shortest with prisoners released in 2016 having served an average sentence length 22 months while the median time served only 14 months.

Sources:

Current Stats

Time Served

SourceDude (talk) 22:37, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: African American Studies

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 22 August 2023 and 4 December 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Skeedoh (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Mayor1704, Dreamer Jr., Acw115.

— Assignment last updated by Studenteditor03 (talk) 14:39, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Global Poverty and Practice

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 23 August 2023 and 20 December 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Meysiramon (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Avaellea.

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Accuracy question by an anonymous user

On 2024-02-18T23:09:11 User:2600:6c55:600:e350:d534:4268:34f:6338 inserted a claim that the US incarceration rate stated as, "at 531 people per 100,000" was, "Inaccurate: 330,000,000 ca. US population divided by 1,120,000 prisoners https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/prisons-report-series-preliminary-data-release equals 339 per 100,000."

I don't know where that user got 1,120,000: The reference cited gives "1,230,100 on December 31, 2022".

However, the reference cited in this article (https://www.prisonstudies.org/country/united-states-america) gives 1,767,200, as of 2021-12-31 including local jails as well as state and federal with a US population of 332.7 million. That gives 531 per hundred thousand. I am therefore reverting the change by this anonymous user. DavidMCEddy (talk) 00:55, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Who cares?

Not to be flippant, but is anyone saying America's 1% incarceration rate is too high? Or that it shows that democracy and free markets are bad? Or that the United States is systemically racist?

If so, we should quote such people and summarize their reasoning, along with (any) counterarguments from those who hold opposing views.

In case the former is mainstream and the latter are a minority, we should indicate how tiny that minority is, we don't violate [[Wikipedia:FRINGE]]. Uncle Ed (talk) 13:52, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Michelle Alexander (2010) The New Jim Crow makes a strong case that "America's 1% incarceration rate is too high". Others making similar claims are cited in the section in this article on Editorial policies of major media.

I think the evidence is incontrovertible that criminal justice polices in the US are political policies designed and implemented at best by ignoring substantive research on the issues in question and at worst with a gross contempt for public safety. This is sustained by a media system that makes money from convincing the public to vote contrary to their best interests to please those who control most of the money for the media. They do this in part by largely suppressing substantive discussion of relevant research. For more, see, e.g., Wikiversity:Information is a public good: Designing experiments to improve government. DavidMCEddy (talk) 17:35, 21 October 2024 (UTC)