On Cultural Privilege

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

At 07:05 AM 1/13/00 -0600, Michael Cykana wrote:
>>Prisoners per 100,000 persons:
>>
>>Russia  685
>>US      645
>>China   115
>
>
>As of midnight Dec. 31, a new study says, there were 1,982,084 adults in
>U.S. jails and prisons. That's 725 inmates for every 100,000 Americans. 
>
>Before the year 2000 is two months old, America's prison population will
>reach 2 million -- probably hitting that level on February 15, the study
>predicts. By the end of 2000, if current rates continue, it said the
>nation's prison population will reach 2,073,969. 
>
>--------
>
>So is the US ahead of Russia? Or do the numbers separate out jail from
>prison? Do these incarceration rates buy anything in terms of rates of
>violence?

Crime stats are notoriously difficult to compare cross nationally, due to
different definitions, reporting procedures, survey methods or simply
cooking the numbers for political purposes.  This is particularly true of
less developed countries that simply do not have enough resources to
collect reliable data (e.g. comparable to the Crime Victimization Survey in
the US).

But to put the figure of 725 inmates per 100 thousand population in a
perspective, let's consider crime victimization rates reported by Bureau of
Justice Statistics (Based on National Crime Victimization Survey) for 1998:

31.3 million crimes of which 8.1 million were violent (including rape);
that gives about 11.6 thousand vicitmizations per 100,000 population and
about 3 thousand violent victimizations per 100,000 population.  


>From that perspective, US seems to be a very violent society, and
incarceration rates seem to reflect that fact.  The fact that the inmate
rate is lower than the victimization rate (even violent vicitimization) may
be due to multiple victimizations per offender, ineffective criminal
justice system, including focus on easy to prosecute victimless crimes
(e.g. drug possession) instead of more serious offenses, or failure to
report crimes to the police (NCVS mesures vicitimizations rather than
crimes reported to the police).

wojtek