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America’s incarceration rate is in decline

(www.theatlantic.com)
234 points paulpauper | 2 comments | 25 Jun 25 17:14 UTC | HN request time: 0.546s | source
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mauvehaus ◴[25 Jun 25 17:46 UTC] No.44379970[source]▶

  From the end of World War II until the mid-1970s, the proportion of Americans in prison each year never exceeded 120 per 100,000
That's a funny way of saying 0.12%. Is there a reason for this? It sure doesn't make it easy to compare the numbers they're giving with other numbers given as percentages.

I guess if you're considering a sufficiently small population you could go from ~600,000 people in Vermont * 120/100,000 -> ~720 imprisoned people in Vermont trivially, but we're the second smallest state. This certainly doesn't scale to cities over a million. At least I'd start having to think harder about it.

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1. WorkerBee28474 ◴[25 Jun 25 17:55 UTC] No.44380061[source]▶
> 120 per 100,000 ... Is there a reason for this?

Crime statistics (e.g. homicides) are often quoted as 'n per 100,000 population'.

It's probably also easier for mental math, e.g. here's a city with 1 million population, that's 10 100Ks, so 1200 people in prison.

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2. InitialLastName ◴[25 Jun 25 18:04 UTC] No.44380167[source]▶
It also lets you abstract away or compare to stats that are scaled to population but might not be 1:1 with a person, e.g. "thefts per 100,000 population per year" where one person might either commit or be the victim of multiple thefts in a year.