[lbo-talk] Equal Justice Initiative: United States Considered Most Punitive Country in the World

[Miles Jackson]

Joshua Morey wrote:
> I encountered a similar article recently and, just for fun, graphed the
> incarceration rates of the 35 countries listed in the article against their
> gini coefficients (imperfect, I know, but i had quick access to the #'s and,
> like i said, it was just for fun...). No surprises, nothing new, not strict
> science, but it returned a correlation coefficient of .628 (fairly strong) -
> if curious you can view the info and the graph in google docs by following
> the link below (sheet three).
>
> https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0At8GW9zr0UiLdFBxcDhCU19GTnFOZUZVUmNkSHZ2LXc&hl=en#gid=3
>
> If nothing else, it warrants a closer, more disciplined look (which i'm sure
> has been done already, just haven't looked for it yet).
>
> best wishes,
> Joshua
>
> BTW the graph might not show up if viewed from a phone
>
>
>   

Interesting data.  The U. S., Russia and Rwanda are "online outliers": 
i.e., they are data points that follow the overall trend line but are 
well above or below the rest of the data points.  Online outliers 
substantially inflate r.  If you omit those 3 outliers, r = .36.  
Moderate positive correlation.  It hurts my head a little to consider 
all the possible causal relationships here!

Miles