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America’s incarceration rate is in decline

(www.theatlantic.com)
236 points paulpauper | 4 comments | 25 Jun 25 17:14 UTC | HN request time: 0.204s | 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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dcow ◴[26 Jun 25 04:07 UTC] No.44384109[source]▶
We may have swung the pendulum a little too far towards deliberate, though. The birthrate right now is below replacement rate, meaning that if we keep going like this (even if the birthrate doesn't keep trending down and holds steady) that society will die off. We need to figure out how to build an economy and society that can facilitate deliberate responsible parentage younger and more often. Luckily we have generations to solve the problem, but it’s there looming.
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1. TrueTom ◴[26 Jun 25 04:58 UTC] No.44384299[source]▶
This is not going to happen when you can just import people from other countries.
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2. ipdashc ◴[26 Jun 25 05:21 UTC] No.44384394[source]▶
... until, obviously, those countries' populations start declining as well?
3. forgotoldacc ◴[26 Jun 25 05:53 UTC] No.44384542[source]▶
Every country on earth is trending downwards. A lot of currently immigrant-exporting countries (e.g. Vietnam, India, Mexico) have sub-replacement levels of birth. They're going to have absolutely massive problems in a few decades when a lot of their youth have left and they're stuck with an inverted population pyramid.

There's a tendency for people in developed (particularly western) countries to feel entitled to immigrants. It's weird to think you'll not only have people changing your diapers when you're 90, but that your country should actively bring in people and deprive poorer countries of similar care, then leave those poor working class immigrants to fend for themselves once they're old.

It's the same mindset that drove society since the 1950s: it makes my life convenient, who cares if it makes life harder for people far from me or after I'm dead? And now we're all living with the accumulated consequences of all that (depleted ozone, climate change, ocean acidification, microplastics, oceans stripped of life, teflon pollution, deforestation, CO2 rising rapidly).

The world needs better solutions.

4. palmotea ◴[26 Jun 25 05:54 UTC] No.44384549[source]▶
> This is not going to happen when you can just import people from other countries.

That's basically the same solution as dumping toxic waste overseas: you're just shifting the problem (depopulation) to someplace poorer and probably less able to deal with it.

Birthrates are declining everywhere, and the current global fertility rate is at replacement (so don't expect it to stay that high). In the future, there's going to be no magical place from which you can "import" all the people you need, because you chose not to make them yourself.