- 12 Nov 2023 16:13
#15295092
I got interested in this topic more recently and decided to post a Quora response from some professional psychologists who have dealt with prison populations for a long time. They do discuss what works or not.
I think the best course of action is to treat prisoners well and give them opportunities for change. The vast majority respond well to that. If you give them lifelong sentences that never work for when they have served their time but are unable to hold a job or live at all with rents and or working? Crime is the only avenue they will return to. In reality not serving the basics to people usually leads to worsening crime statistics.
What is your opinion? Solutions?
What percentage of the population are criminals?
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Rhonda Hohertz
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Master's Degree in Psychology, Licensed psychotherapist4y
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How does the intelligence of criminals tend to compare to that of the general population?
I spent 23 years working in prisons. Inmates generally tended to have less than average intelligence in my experience. I did see some people like pedophiles who had doctorate degrees but they were the exception rather than the rule. Inmates were incarcerated for three basic groups of crimes: Stupid stuff, Stupid violent stuff and Stupid sick stuff. Here are examples of all three (in order) that I just confined to convenience stores. I remember an inmate walking into a convenience store and putting a gym bag on the counter, announcing a robbery and stating the gym bag was a bomb. The clerk jumped over the counter, beat the crap out of the robber and threw him out of the store. The clerk called the police who responded. They opened the gym bag and of course found the robber’s wallet with his identification. I remember an inmate who walked into a convenience store started to pull his pistol out of his pants to rob the store and shot himself in the testicle. He was so angry that he then shot the clerk and killed them. Of course he was bleeding badly from shooting his testicle off and had to go to the hospital where he was arrested for the murder. I remember another inmate who entered a convenience store with a rifle and forced a female clerk into the back room where he raped her. He then called the police and announced the hostage situation. He held the female clerk in the back room as a hostage. His demand to turn her loose was he wanted the police to bring his son to the scene and then he would surrender. The police felt this was a reasonable demand and stated they would comply. They went out in full force to find his son only to figure out he did not have a son.
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Anthony
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Former Software Engineer at X (Alphabet Inc.)2y
So this question is a bit complicated to answer, because it depends on your definitions and is a huge topic of research on it’s own. In my opinion a “criminal” is someone who has done a serious crime and/or has a behavior pattern of repeatedly committing serious crimes. Misdemeanors are usually victimless crimes, or low enough level crimes that rarely have jail time so I don’t think it makes sense to call those people “criminals” if they just made a mistake once and don’t have a history of breaking the law. The general public usually thinks of a criminal as someone who robs and steals/ is in a gang/drug dealer etc.. basically someone who commits felonies.
I’m going to go with the definition that a “criminal” is someone that commits a felony that they have been convicted for and are either serving time or are on probation. This has a lot of grey area, because there is a percentage of convictions that are errors, and likewise there are a large number of unsolved cases, people who get their crimes dismissed despite being guilty etc. So for simplicity, this is just a rough ballpark with a margin of error going both ways.
As of 2020, the US incarcerated population was 2.3 million people, 698 per 100,000 or 0.698% of the population. A lot of these people (470k) end up not getting convicted, so that number drops somewhat. Most of the people who are convicted are repeat offenders, with an estimate of around 83% having prior arrests in the previous 9 years.
So 0.698% is only accounting for people who were convicted of a crime and in jail/prison for it. If you look at all felons(so anyone ever convicted of a felony) that percentage is 2.27% of the population, however this includes people that have served their time and in my opinion should not be considered criminals if they aren't committing crimes anymore. One of the reasons the US prison system has a large recidivism rate is in how we treat people who commit crimes. They carry a stigma around with them, permanent punishments etc which basically guarantees they will get back into trouble as a self fulfilling prophecy. Countries like Denmark have the opposite approach, they treat criminals well and their recidivism rates are drastically lower.
Sources:
Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2020
Report showing the number of people who are locked up in different types of facilities and why - 2020.
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3969807/
Number of People by State Who Cannot Vote Due to a Felony Conviction - Felon Voting - ProCon.org
According to The Sentencing Project, about 4.6 million Americans were disenfranchised (not allowed to vote) because of a felony conviction in 2022, down from about 5.2 million in 2020. Each state determines voting policy for people convicted of felonies within its borders. The policies range from being allowed to vote from prison to permanently losing [...]Read More... from Number of People by State Who Cannot Vote Due to a Felony Conviction
https://felonvoting.procon.org/number-o ... onviction/
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Brian White
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Scientist4y
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How does the intelligence of criminals tend to compare to that of the general population?
The correlation matrix below gives the Pearson correlation coefficient for IQ and a range of crimes. If you read the column X1, just go down the list and you will see the correlations. Note that all of the correlations are negative. This means that as IQ goes from high to low, the crime rate increases.
The left figure below shows the mean number of crimes committed (vertical axis) as a function of test scores. As the test scores increase, the number of crimes committed decreases. The right figure below shows the percent of people at a given test score who have a history of any criminal behavior… (more)
I think the best course of action is to treat prisoners well and give them opportunities for change. The vast majority respond well to that. If you give them lifelong sentences that never work for when they have served their time but are unable to hold a job or live at all with rents and or working? Crime is the only avenue they will return to. In reality not serving the basics to people usually leads to worsening crime statistics.
What is your opinion? Solutions?
La historia de mi amor
se pudiera encontrar
en cada corazón,
en cada soledad.
Silvio Rodriguez
se pudiera encontrar
en cada corazón,
en cada soledad.
Silvio Rodriguez