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America’s incarceration rate is in decline

(www.theatlantic.com)
254 points paulpauper | 1 comments | 25 Jun 25 17:14 UTC | HN request time: 0.283s | 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. thmsths ◴[26 Jun 25 14:56 UTC] No.44388077[source]▶
I am very conflicted on this. On one hand I absolutely despise that hating the children attitude and I believe we are reaping what we are sowing. On the other hand there are serial offenders that are not being dealt appropriately. My naive solution is to keep the current, more permissive system for first offenders and then treat repeat offenders as adults. I mean if you are a teen, succumb to peer pressure and do something stupid like stealing a car, I fully believe that we should not throw the book at you. We need to dispel you of the notion that this is not a big deal and that you will get away with it, while ensuring that we do not harm your future prospects.

But if being arrested, handcuffed and taken in front of a judge is not enough to make you understand that this kind of behavior will not be tolerated, and you do steal a car again a few weeks later, then yes, we will have to escalate instead of saying "nothing we can do, it's just a kid". Otherwise we are literally sending the message that they can act with impunity.