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America’s incarceration rate is in decline

(www.theatlantic.com)
271 points paulpauper | 4 comments | 25 Jun 25 17:14 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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casenmgreen ◴[25 Jun 25 18:01 UTC] No.44380132[source]▶
Freakonomics argued that crime correlates to whether or not abortion is available.

If it is not, crime rates are up, and by a lot.

If it is, crime rates are down.

When you flip from one to the other, takes about 15/20 years for the effect to show up.

Rationale is that forcing parents to have their kids when they're not ready for them significantly increases delinquency in young adults.

This is apparently the only possible theory at the moment. It's not proven, of course, but the other theories which were given have been found lacking. This is the only theory which has some evidence, and hasn't been found to be wrong.

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1. testing22321 ◴[26 Jun 25 14:59 UTC] No.44388103[source]▶
It’s clearly very easy to correlate low crime with free healthcare, education, unemployment, social safety net.

Compare the US to every other OECD country.

Nobody outside the US would even waste their time on having the discussion it is so blaringly obvious, but those in the US suffering the effects will denounce it till the cows come home.

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2. rendang ◴[26 Jun 25 15:35 UTC] No.44388418[source]▶
What do you mean by education? The USA has higher PISA scores than peer countries and also has high rates of tertiary education. Do you think that middle class educated people having high student debt burdens causes crime?
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3. testing22321 ◴[26 Jun 25 17:13 UTC] No.44389279[source]▶
Free tertiary education.

The US has vastly higher illiteracy than OECD countries.

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4. rendang ◴[26 Jun 25 21:33 UTC] No.44391694{3}[source]▶
US has much higher tertiary education attainment than the OECD average. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_...

People with tertiary education who paid a lot for it or are in debt for it do not commit large numbers of crimes!

Not sure what you mean by "illiteracy" which is measured in different ways. US PISA reading scores are higher than all but 2 EU countries

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International_St...