Highlights
Does the US have the highest rates of crime and incarceration?
Incarceration numbers going up in other countries while it’s declining in the United States.
Massive offender recidivism indicates that when released, the vast majority of offenders return to crime.
Author
Leonard Adam Sipes, Jr.
Retired federal senior spokesperson. Thirty-five years of directing award-winning public relations for national and state criminal justice agencies. Interviewed multiple times by every national news outlet. Former Senior Specialist for Crime Prevention for the Department of Justice’s clearinghouse. Former Director of Information Services, National Crime Prevention Council. Former Adjunct Associate Professor of criminology and public affairs-University of Maryland, University College. Former advisor to presidential and gubernatorial campaigns. Former advisor to the “McGruff-Take a Bite Out of Crime” national media campaign. Certificate of Advanced Study-Johns Hopkins University. Former police officer. Aspiring drummer.
Author of ”Success With The Media: Everything You Need To Survive Reporters and Your Organization” available at Amazon and additional booksellers.
Article
I have an inquiry from a state executive regarding US and world incarceration and crime after reading a recent article on offender recidivism.
She suggests that the US has very high rates of crime and incarceration; possibly the highest in the world.
She askes about the connection between incarceration and public safety.
This article responds to her questions.
World And US Incarceration
The US is supposed to have the world’s highest rate of incarceration, Wikipedia.
But is our rate of incarceration “really” the highest in the world? What defines incarceration?
As of 2019, it was estimated that Chinese authorities may have detained up to 1.5 million people, mostly Uyghurs but also including Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and other ethnic Turkic Muslims, Christians as well as some foreign citizens such as Kazakhstanis, who are being held in secretive internment camps, Wikipedia.
Some put the population of the Chinese internment camps at three million.
There are other forms of incarceration from totalitarian countries engaged in political control or countries engaged in internment for immigrants, The Guardian.
Does anyone believe that the US detains-incarcerates higher rates of people than North Korea?
Regardless, it seems indisputable that the US has a very high rate of incarceration.
Having said that, the incarceration numbers are growing for the international community and shrinking for the US.
World Incarceration Grows 25 Percent
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that approximately 11.7 million people were detained in prison globally in 2019.
The current estimate represents an increase of more than 25% from the year 2000, when there were around 9.3 million people imprisoned globally.
The global share of unsentenced detainees in the prison population has not changed much in the past 20 years, ranging between 29% and 31%.
As of 2019, there were an estimated 10.9 million male prisoners and an estimated 0.8 million female prisoners globally.
As of 2019, there were an estimated 152 prisoners for every 100,000 population globally. This global rate has not changed much over the last two decades – it stood at 151 prisoners in 2000.
There is, however, considerable sub-regional variation: as of 2019, a much larger share of the population was imprisoned in Northern America (577 per 100,000 population), Latin America and the Caribbean (267) and Eastern Europe (262), than in Sub-Saharan Africa (84), Melanesia (78), or Southern Asia (48).
Other regions, such as Latin America and Australia/New Zealand, have seen growth in the prison population over the last two decades.
The US Incarceration Rates And Numbers Declined
The data below contains observations on incarceration and those on community supervision.
In 2019 (latest release) the number of persons supervised by U.S. adult correctional systems (6,344,000) decreased (down 65,200 persons) for the twelfth consecutive year.
The 1.0% decline in the correctional population during 2019 was due to decreases in the community supervision (down 0.9%) and incarcerated (down 1.7%) populations.
Since 2009, the correctional population decreased by 12.4% (down 895,200 persons), an average of 1.3% annually.
At year-end 2019, about 2,480 per 100,000 adult U.S. residents were under correctional supervision, the lowest rate since 1991.
By the end of 2019, the community supervision population had dropped to 4,357,700, its lowest level in the last two decades.
All of the decrease in the community supervision population during 2019 was due to a decline in the probation population (down 47,100).
In 2019, the incarcerated population fell to 2,086,600, its lowest level since 2003 (includes state and federal prisons and the jail population).
The decline in the incarcerated population during 2019 was primarily due to a decrease in the prison population (down 33,600).
From 2009 to 2019, the parole population grew by 6.6% and was the only correctional population with an overall increase during that period.
The incarceration rate dropped each year during the last decade, from 980 per 100,000 adult U.S. residents held in state or federal prisons or local jails at year-end 2009 to 810 per 100,000 at year-end 2019.
By the end of 2019, the incarceration rate had dropped to the same rate as 1995 (810 per 100,000 adult U.S. residents).
Is The US More Dangerous Than Other Countries?
While the US has its problems with violence, it’s not the most dangerous country in the world, see Highest Rates of Violence.
There are many nations where the crime problem is much worse. One index states that the US is 45th for total crime.
The US does well when it comes to perceptions of safety and law enforcement.
The United States ranks 35th out of 142 countries measured on Gallup’s Law and Order Index as to personal safety and perceptions of law enforcement, Safest Countries.
If you only included large, multicultural and multireligious societies, the United States would score better. The US had a score of 84. Singapore was the highest with a score of 97. The lowest-scoring countries include Mexico (score of 40), South Africa (score of 31), and Venezuela (score of 17).
Explosive violence is well documented for a variety of central and South American cities and countries as well as South Africa. Several American cities are in the list as the world’s most dangerous (i.e., Baltimore, St. Louis, Detroit, New Orleans).
There are additional resources for world crime at The Most Dangerous Cities.
Conclusions
Crime: The US doesn’t come close to having the highest rates of crime or violence, regardless of recent increases.
Incarceration: There are plenty of countries that have a worse crime problem than the United States, yet their levels of “official” incarceration are much lower.
Yes, the US incarceration rate is very high compared to other countries per Wikipedia.
That disparity may be eroding somewhat per the UN report.
There are legitimate concerns regarding what countries report as to their “official” incarcerated populations and what’s actually happening.
In the US, we add state and federal prisons and jail populations. There is a possibility that other countries are not being precise as to their correctional counts.
Incarceration And Public Safety: The inevitable question is whether high US incarceration rates keep us safer.
Rising violence in the US (a 28 percent increase since 2015 per the Bureau of Justice Statistics) runs concurrently with considerable decreases in incarceration, Corrections And Rising Crime. However, the correlation is not conclusive. One does not necessarily cause the other. Correlation does not equal causation.
Yet massive recidivism in the United States indicates that when released, the vast majority of offenders return to multiple arrests and fifty percent-plus incarcerations.
That lesson may be driving increased incarceration in countries where crime is far worse per the UN report.
Considering that most people in state prisons are there for a current conviction for a crime of violence, and if you add criminal history for violence, and then acknowledge the massive number of new arrests after incarceration, it seems obvious that there is a connection between correctional numbers and the amount of crime we are currently experiencing. Note that there are endless criminologists and advocates who disagree with my suggestion of a crime-incarceration connection.
Having said that, there are thousands of people released from prison who are now leading crime and drug-free lives.
I interviewed hundreds of them for radio and television shows. All stated that it was their own personal motivation plus program support that kept them crime-free.
When asked about the others, they suggested demons (i.e., mental health-substance abuse-past abuses) they could not control.
See More
See more articles on crime and justice at Crime in America.
Most Dangerous Cities/States/Countries at Most Dangerous Cities.
US Crime Rates at Nationwide Crime Rates.
National Offender Recidivism Rates at Offender Recidivism.
An Overview Of Data On Mental Health at Mental Health And Crime.
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