[lbo-talk] Marx without quotation marks

Politicus E. epoliticus at gmail.com
Tue Mar 31 18:47:53 PDT 2009


Correction: The average annual number of prisoners were executed by a civil authority in the period 1930-9 was 185.

Also, Sam Bowles and Arjun Jayadev have an interesting paper called "Garrison America" in which they count guard labor in the US. They estimate that, in 1860, guard labor was 6% of the total US labor force; in 1948, this was 18.9%; in 2002, 26.1%.

On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 9:36 PM, Politicus E. <epoliticus at gmail.com> wrote:


> Cox asked "What evidence do you have that the level of violence is
> significantly greater now than (say) 70 years ago? Not anecdotal evidence
> from headlines but hard data. This is an empirical question regarding
> comparison of distinct periods of time. I doubt very much myself that
> violence has increased in any significant way." Since I enjoy data
> analysis, and searching for data, I decided to attempt to give a provisional
> answer.
>
> (a) Approximately 163 persons per 100,000 of the resident population were
> imprisoned in 1990; approximately 256 persons per 100,000 of the resident
> population were imprisoned in 2006 (Statistical Abstract of the United
> States 2009);
> (b) There were exactly 139 prisoners under federal or state jurisdiction
> per 100,000 residents in 1980 (this includes those on parole); there were
> exactly 501 such prisoners per 100,000 residents in 2006 (Statistical
> Abstract of the United States 2009);
> (c) Exactly 185 prisoners were executed, on the average, by a civil
> authority in the period 1930-9; exactly 23 prisoners were executed by a
> civil authority in 1990; exactly 98 prisoners were executed by a civil
> authority in 1999; exactly 42 prisoners were executed by a civil authority
> in 2007 (Statistical Abstract of the United States 2009);
>
> What might be be useful to know is total expenditure per capita, in real
> terms, on goods & services related to control, punishment, surveillance,
> etc., in aggregated form.
>



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