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America’s incarceration rate is in decline

(www.theatlantic.com)
239 points paulpauper | 6 comments | 25 Jun 25 17:14 UTC | HN request time: 1.964s | source | bottom
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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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JumpCrisscross ◴[25 Jun 25 22:14 UTC] No.44382284[source]▶
It's lead.

Lead concentration in America "rapidly increased in the 1950s and then declined in the 1980s" [1]. There is a non-linear discontinuity among kids born in the mid 80s, with linear improvements through to those born in the late 2000s [2].

Arrest rates for violent crimes are highest from 15 to 29 years old (particularly 17 to 23-year olds) [3]. They're particularly low for adults after 50 years old.

We're around 40 years from the last of the high-lead children. 17 years ago is the late 2000s.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10406...

[2] https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/EHP7932

[3] https://kagi.com/assistant/d2c6fdd5-73dd-4952-ae40-1f36aef1e...

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ericmcer ◴[25 Jun 25 23:29 UTC] No.44382763[source]▶
It is insane to just confidently assert that the only factor in the decrease in crime is Lead. Treating an insanely nuanced issue as an absolute doesn't make your argument more compelling, it is actually kind of baffling.
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sien ◴[26 Jun 25 00:44 UTC] No.44383183[source]▶
There was a crime decline in many rich countries from the 1990s as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_drop#Decline_since_the_e...

Maybe they were doing similar things with lead or something else is a big factor. Perhaps the rise of ever more cheap entertainment for young males who are most likely to commit crime. That's a global thing.

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1. kragen ◴[26 Jun 25 02:39 UTC] No.44383769[source]▶
Yes, leaded gasoline was being banned in many rich countries at about the same time, and there's a positive correlation between the year it was banned and the year that violent street crime began to decline.
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2. dmix ◴[26 Jun 25 04:44 UTC] No.44384253[source]▶
So reducing lead exposure immediately changes your brain to do less crime?
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3. kragen ◴[26 Jun 25 05:04 UTC] No.44384328[source]▶
No, there's an offset of about 18 years, if I remember correctly?
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4. dmix ◴[26 Jun 25 05:30 UTC] No.44384440{3}[source]▶
I see, so since a large majority of crime is done by young people, peaking between 15-25, they are basically comparing a whole new generation of kids who didn't have developmental brain issues vs their elders.

Were the older people who grew up with lead exposure also experiencing higher rates of impulsive crime in the late >1990s relative to the new and prior generations? That would help eliminate the major differences in economics/culture/politics of their upbringing (for ex: mass flight of families moving to the suburbs to raise their young kids after the 1970s crime wave scared them away).

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5. kragen ◴[26 Jun 25 12:14 UTC] No.44386656{4}[source]▶
That's an interesting question, and I don't know the answer.
6. potato3732842 ◴[26 Jun 25 15:42 UTC] No.44388487[source]▶
Kids that grew up huffing leaded exhaust are more bad decisions inclined than they would otherwise be. It's not just crime. The most heavily leaded cohort in the US is also known for drunkly crashing their muscle cars and wasting their youth smoking pot in a commune.

Bad decisions like these get less common with age, partly because of consequences (jail, death, etc), partly because getting up to no good requires free time, ambition and freedom, all of which are in shorter supply with age and the resultant responsibilities competing for every individual's supply of these resources.

So if the replacement cohort of people who are coming into prime crime age decline to participate at the same rates the crime rate goes down.