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America’s incarceration rate is in decline

(www.theatlantic.com)
234 points paulpauper | 5 comments | 25 Jun 25 17:14 UTC | HN request time: 1.035s | source
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strict9 ◴[25 Jun 25 17:54 UTC] No.44380047[source]▶
>Rapidly declining numbers of youth are committing crimes, getting arrested, and being incarcerated. This matters because young offenders are the raw material that feeds the prison system: As one generation ages out, another takes its place on the same horrid journey.

Another factor which will soon impact this, if it isn't already, is the rapidly changing nature of youth. Fertility rates have been dropping since 2009 or so. Average age of parents is increasing. Teen pregnancy on a long and rapid decline.

All of these working together means that each year the act of having a child is much more deliberate and the parents likely having more resources. Which in turn should mean fewer youth delinquency, which as the article notes is how most in prison started out.

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spinner34f ◴[25 Jun 25 23:52 UTC] No.44382898[source]▶
The flip-side of an aging society with declining fertility is that older people, with fewer children are likely to be less sympathetic to children, and you could see the incarceration rates increase, or remain steady, as less severe infractions are punished more harshly.

We recently saw this play out in the Queensland, Australia, state election where the opposition party, which was pretty much out of ideas, ran a scare campaign about youth crime in regional areas. Neighbourhood Facebook Groups where CCTV footage of "suspicious youth" are a mainstay and an aging population did the rest of the job and they won the election and passed "adult time for adult crime" laws: whether you agree with these or not, "adult time" in Australia means that the youth incarcerated will be adults in their 20s and 30s when they get out.

The Australian state of New South Wales routinely strip-searches young children, but again, there isn't much outcry.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out elsewhere. The worst case scenario is that kids will be politically scapegoated ("why should childless and aging taxpayers fund education?"), and it leads to a further decline in fertility rates.

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1. lazyasciiart ◴[26 Jun 25 01:32 UTC] No.44383452[source]▶
Australia has had pretty terrible “jail children like adults” opinions for a long time. Politics in Melbourne constantly turns on fears of youth [black immigrant] crime waves that are making people afraid to leave the house.

https://raisetheage.org.au/

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2. Nursie ◴[26 Jun 25 03:54 UTC] No.44384048[source]▶
Queensland seems to be making a lot of noise about that at the moment as well.

Seems to be this weird reasoning (and I know it has cropped up in the US too) that - if they did an 'adult' crime they should be tried as an adult. It totally ignores what we know about developing brains - they are not fully developed, they don't consider consequences the same way as older people.

That's not to say they should be allowed to 'get away with it', but we need to take into account that it's not really the same thing as adults doing it.

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3. worthless-trash ◴[26 Jun 25 08:04 UTC] No.44385240[source]▶
> That's not to say they should be allowed to 'get away with it', but we need to take into account that it's not really the same thing as adults doing it.

However, they -clearly- do get away with it, continually the current method of punishment is not deterring them from crime. These are not 'oh he made poor decisions style crimes', you're not paying attention or are not living in this area if you think so.

I wish i could dig up the study from Townsville crime statistics (this is the closest i could find https://statements.qld.gov.au/statements/101697 )

The key takeway is:

“The residents living in these areas have been let down for too long under the former Government who allowed serious repeat youth offenders to avoid adequate punishment and let them continue to terrorise these communities,”

Current deterrents clearly are not working. There are only so many levers the government can pull. Children learn poor lessons and inadequate supervision from their families, but if they are taken from their home the media screams 'stolen generation' so in the end individuals terrorised by them have to deal with the burden of their continued long term criminal behavior.

You may believe that children can be rehabilitated, I'd dearly love this to be the truth, however my observations show that its not a reflection of reality.

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4. Nursie ◴[26 Jun 25 08:30 UTC] No.44385381{3}[source]▶
I’m not trying to play down any problems or say nothing should be done.

In fact I’m not expressing any beliefs other than the (very well supported) notion that children’s brains are not fully developed and therefore they shouldn’t be dealt with in the same way as adults because that’s just dumb and is likely not to help.

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5. jlawson ◴[26 Jun 25 11:54 UTC] No.44386509{4}[source]▶
Can you expand on "that's just dumb"? I don't understand what argument this is trying to make.

All people have different brains; some are very low-intelligence and impulsive by nature and training, and this can apply at any age. The point of this punishment is not to apply a sort of cosmic morality according to the true culpability of a soul. Abstract principles about whether the person 'deserves' a punishment aren't actually relevant regardless of what shape their brain is. The point is the real-life consequence of their criminality on others, and how to stop them hurting people. We must stop them hurting people; let's figure out how.

This dedication to abstracted principles and cosmic morality over fixing the actual issue is really problematic; I see this more and more these days.