If We Release More Prisoners, Will There Be More Crime?

reason infographic

Comments

[Jimbo]

When did the states begin releasing prisioners, in CA for example? The stats are from 2009-2014 but did all the states start releasing them in 2009?

[buybuydandavis]

This graphic looks like a whole lotta stupid from start to finish.

“the states that saw the largest reductions in prison populations”
– Might want to specify whether those reductions were from people released *because of the change in guidelines*, and not just, you know, because fewer people were committing crimes, fewer getting arrested, fewer getting found guilty.

– Did you notice that the US average (10 in program states plus 40 other states not in the program) showed a *greater* reduction in violent crime than the program being touted? Ooops.

– It’s not the US average that is the relevant comparison statistic, but the average of the states not in the program, which must be even better than the -15.3 for the average as a whole.

– And then again, averaging percentages across states, instead of aggregating across states and taking a percentage, is probably a mistake.

– Also, even calculating as you indicate, how do you get a -13% average when all states except NY are below (more negative than) -13%?

Who knows? Maybe you did something sensible, but the failure to communicate something meaningful leaves me with little confidence that you calculated something meaningful.