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But I have never seen a side by side comparison of recidivism rates, abuse complaints, etc. If the privately run facilities are really so bad, then why don't the critics show some real data instead of obfuscating.

Sometimes, a minute with Google can keep you from saying dumb things.

"...In 1998, when American prisons held 1.3 million prisoners, there were only 59 inmate-on-inmate homicides. That's a rate of one murder for every 22,000 prisoners. The homicide rate in Wackenhut's New Mexico facilities in those nine months was about one for every 400 prisoners--and that's not counting the death of Ralph Garcia, Wackenhut's guard....

"A research project I directed in 1999 compared the quality of correctional services in a medium-security private prison run by CCA in Minnesota with the three medium-security prisons run by the state. We found many more operational problems in the CCA prison--from program deficiencies and unreliable methods of classifying prisoners for security purposes to high rates of staff turnover that resulted in inadequate numbers of experienced, well-trained personnel. And this was in a private prison that was not notoriously troubled--a facility that the company, in fact, considered to be exemplary." -- http://prospect.org/article/bailing-out-private-jails

"First, the number of staff assigned to private facilities is approximately 15 percent lower than the number of staff assigned to public facilities (28 per 100 inmates in private facilities versus 32 per 100 inmates in public). Sec- ond, management information system (MIS) capabilities appear to be lacking in private facilities. Third, the rate of major incidents is higher at private facilities than at public facilities....

"The re- sults are similar to the original analysis with one major exception: in this comparison, the privately operated facilities have a much higher rate of inmate-on-inmate and inmate-on-staff assaults and other disturbances. These differences may be related to other factors such as reporting stan- dards or the fact that correctional facilities often experience management difficulties when they are newly opened. The CCA Youngstown facility is a good example of such difficulties (Clark, 1998). However, insufficient training for and lack of qualified staff in key positions may also be a valid explanation for these differences. This would be consistent with the claims of critics of privatization who charge that private prisons are inadequately staffed by inexperienced and poorly trained correctional officers. Coupled with a lack of programs and work assignments, higher rates of misconduct from inmates predictably occur. Nevertheless, the notion that privately operated prisons are safer or better managed than public facilities is not supported by these results." -- http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/bja/181249.pdf

Are you serious? This is painfully trivial to find with Google Scholar.

Education or punishment? Reformatory schools in Norway, 18401950 Education or punishment? Reformatory schools in Norway, 18401950
Daddy in Prison: An Evaluation (Norwegian)
The prison reform movement: Forlorn hope
People's Justice - A Major Poll of Public Attitudes on Crime and Punishment
Wilful Obstruction - The Frustration of Prison Reform
Reaffirming Rehabilitation


On top of that you have the highly conservative Daily Mail, as the grandparent poster linked, stating unabashedly that the system on Bastoy has proven itself as being more effective than Norwegian closed (traditional) prisons, which is a position that is quite controversial for the newspaper and not at all towing the party line. That may not have the integrity of a longitudinal study conducted by unbiased researchers, but the tour escort is quoted as saying that there has only been one attempted escape in all of Bastoy's years of operation, and that the region has the lowest re-offending rate in all of Europe despite Norway's absence of a death penalty or life sentence. These are not light claims.

Next time please RTFA and JFGI.

Don't shoot at ghosts, rookie. It gets you laughed at.

Are you serious? This is painfully trivial to find with Google Scholar.

Education or punishment? Reformatory schools in Norway, 18401950 Education or punishment? Reformatory schools in Norway, 18401950
Daddy in Prison: An Evaluation (Norwegian)
The prison reform movement: Forlorn hope
People's Justice - A Major Poll of Public Attitudes on Crime and Punishment
Wilful Obstruction - The Frustration of Prison Reform
Reaffirming Rehabilitation


On top of that you have the highly conservative Daily Mail, as the grandparent poster linked, stating unabashedly that the system on Bastoy has proven itself as being more effective than Norwegian closed (traditional) prisons, which is a position that is quite controversial for the newspaper and not at all towing the party line. That may not have the integrity of a longitudinal study conducted by unbiased researchers, but the tour escort is quoted as saying that there has only been one attempted escape in all of Bastoy's years of operation, and that the region has the lowest re-offending rate in all of Europe despite Norway's absence of a death penalty or life sentence. These are not light claims.

Next time please RTFA and JFGI.

Don't shoot at ghosts, rookie. It gets you laughed at.

Are you serious? This is painfully trivial to find with Google Scholar.

Education or punishment? Reformatory schools in Norway, 18401950 Education or punishment? Reformatory schools in Norway, 18401950
Daddy in Prison: An Evaluation (Norwegian)
The prison reform movement: Forlorn hope
People's Justice - A Major Poll of Public Attitudes on Crime and Punishment
Wilful Obstruction - The Frustration of Prison Reform
Reaffirming Rehabilitation


On top of that you have the highly conservative Daily Mail, as the grandparent poster linked, stating unabashedly that the system on Bastoy has proven itself as being more effective than Norwegian closed (traditional) prisons, which is a position that is quite controversial for the newspaper and not at all towing the party line. That may not have the integrity of a longitudinal study conducted by unbiased researchers, but the tour escort is quoted as saying that there has only been one attempted escape in all of Bastoy's years of operation, and that the region has the lowest re-offending rate in all of Europe despite Norway's absence of a death penalty or life sentence. These are not light claims.

Next time please RTFA and JFGI.

Don't shoot at ghosts, rookie. It gets you laughed at.

From a study done by the Institute of Criminology at Cambridge University commissioned by the Home Office in 1999: http://members.multimania.co.uk/lawnet/SENTENCE.PDF

The report concludes that the studies reviewed do not provide a basis for inferring that increasing
the severity of sentences generally is capable of enhancing deterrent effects. ...

Correlations: Severity Effects. In the Farrington studies just mentioned, the statistical
associations between severity of punishment and crime rates were much weaker. Such negative
correlations between sentence severity and crime rates as were found to exist generally were not
sufficient to achieve statistical significance. These patterns, which are consistent with those found in
earlier studies, provide little support for an hypothesis of marginal deterrence with respect to
severity of punishment. One of these studies, Farrington, Langan and Wikstrom (1994), provides
calculations that compare the English and America (as well as Swedish) trends. The absence of a
finding in that study of strong correlations for severity is notable -- because U.S. penalty levels have
been substantially higher than English levels during the periods studied.

Then there's this study from 1993: http://jrc.sagepub.com/content/30/4/445.short

Increasing evidence shows great diversity in the effects of the criminal sanction. Legal punishment either reduces, increases, or has no effect on future crimes, depending on the type of offenders, offenses, social settings, and levels of analysis. A theory of “defiance” helps explain the conditions under which punishment increases crime. Procedural justice (fairness or legitimacy) of experienced punishment is essential for the acknowledgment of shame, which conditions deterrence; punishment perceived as unjust can lead to unacknowledged shame and defiant pride that increases future crime. Both “specific” defiance by individuals and “general” defiance by collectivities results from punishment perceived as unfair or excessive, unless deterrent effects counterbalance defiance and render the net effect of sanctions irrelevant. By implication, crime might be reduced more by police and courts treating all citizens with fairness and respect than by increasing punishments. A variety of research designs can be used to test, refine, or reject the theory.

And another study from 1975: https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publications/abstract.aspx?ID=27596

Nine relevant attributes of legal punishment are noted by the author: objective certainty, perceived certainty, perceived severity of prescribed punishments, perceived severity of actual punishments, presumptive severity of actual punishments, objective celerity, perceived celerity, presumptive celerity of prescribed punishments, and knowledge of prescribed punishments. The author's critical review of purported tests of the deterrence doctrine shows that only three of the attributes of punishment have been considered and that the investigators ignored possible preventive consequences of punishment other than deterrence. Nine such consequences (incapacitation, normative validation, etc.) are analyzed in this book. The author maintains that all of the attributes of punishment and their possible preventive consequences are crucial in considering contending penal policies. The author notes that legislators are preoccupied with the severity of statutory penalties; however, that attribute of legal punishment is of questionable significance. Moreover, he states that a defensible penal policy is precluded unless policy makers recognize three t

Teen Pregnancy
Drug Use
Divorce Rates

For those not inclined to RAnyFA - they all agree with the GP.

How many "school shootings" in the past 10 or 20 years? Go back to your 50 years and replace "knife" with "gun", and check again. I bet you'll find that in lower-income schools especially, school violence has remained relatively constant. Or else the difference may be that they simply waited until after school?

How many turned out to be related to violent gangs?

How many were actually "videogame related"? And no, Columbine doesn't count, despite the propaganda and misinformation you've been hearing.

As someone who grew up before video games I have to disagree. My mom (dad was always at work) shooed us out the door in the morning and we came home by dinner. We got into the usual kind of trouble during the day, and played violent "real" games instead of video games. I don't remember ever being encouraged to practice self control, whatever that is. I do remember getting into a few fights and being arrested once. I don't think my experience was much different from my peers. If anything, I think kids today are under more supervision and control than they used to be. Stats show juvenile crime at the same level as it was in 1980 after peaking in the mid-90's.

Surely a study like this is not funded by the organic food industry?

Do you think that junk food, including candy, can't be produced organically? Come into my kitchen...

"Organic" refers to how it's grown and produced, not how nutritious is is (other than that it is more likely to lack "negatively nutritious" contamination by pesticides, herbicides, GMOs, etcetera).

Anyway, there's nothing new about associating crime with poor nutrition (the article is a bit pop science sensationalistic but is a good summary, see here and here and here for some of the studies):

Stephen Schoenthaler, a criminal-justice professor at California State University in Stanislaus, has been researching the relationship between food and behaviour for more than 20 years He has proven that reducing the sugar and fat intake in our daily diets leads to higher IQs and better grades in school. When Schoenthaler supervised a change in meals served at 803 schools in low-income neighbourhoods in New York City, the number of students passing final exams rose from 11 percent below the national average to five percent above. He is best known for his work in youth detention centers. One of his studies showed that the number of violations of house rules fell by 37 percent when vending machines were removed and canned food in the cafeteria was replaced by fresh alternatives. He summarizes his findings this way: "Having a bad diet right now is a better predictor of future violence than past violent behaviour."

Recent research showed similar conclusions. Bernard Gesch, physiologist at the University of Oxford, decided to test the anecdotal clues in the most thorough study so far in this field. In a prison for men between the ages of 18 and 21 in England's Buckinghamshire, 231 volunteers were divided into two groups: One was given nutrition supplements along with their meals that contained our approximate daily needs for vitamins, minerals and fatty acids; the other group got placebos. Neither the prisoners, nor the guards, nor the researchers at the prison knew who took fake supplements and who got the real thing.

The researchers then tallied the number of times the participants violated prison rules, and compared it to the same data that had been collected in the months leading up to the nutrition study. The prisoners given supplements for four consecutive months committed an average of 26 percent fewer violations compared to the preceding period. Those given placebos showed no marked change in behaviour. For serious breaches of conduct, particularly the use of violence, the number of violations decreased 37 percent for the men given nutrition supplements, while the placebo group showed no change.

ALTHOUGH THERE IS A LACK OF UNIFORM DATA, RESEARCH INDICATES THAT WHILE IMPROVED STREET LIGHTING DOES NOT RESULT IN A SIGNIFICANT REDUCTION IN CRIME, PARTICULARLY IF CRIME DISPLACEMENT IS TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT, IT DOES SIGNIFICANTLY REDUCE FEAR OF CRIME. IT IS FURTHER CONCLUDED THAT A DEFINITIVE STATEMENT CANNOT BE MADE ABOUT THE IMPACT OF STREET LIGHTING ON CRIME

Other studies have demonstrating that removing lights (e.g. from schools ad night) reduce the incidence of certain crimes, particularly vandalism, "Hey lefty, I can't see where me spraypaint is going." "you painted me you gob****". So why did we populate our cities with these glare prone lights which at worst help criminals hide in shadows and glare and at best do nothing? Why do we call the halogen/mercury lights hanging from houses and barns "security lights?" Someone once proposed that the utility companies have excess load at night and wast lights help balance their load.

But the real reason is that "feeling safer" is what homeland security is all about. Just like "feeling wealthy" works well in a keynsian based fiat currency system.

-- I must be old, I remember when reality had a bit more reality in it.

0.6% is a truly massive amount of public money for one organisation. I'm finding it hard to grasp how you could think otherwise. 0.6% of your taxes as an individual may not be very much, but 0.6% of all the nations taxes together is definitely 'a lot' of money. I'd expect there are far more than 200 things that the government has to spend money on as well, so that means that NASA is getting a percentage that must be well above average for a government department. What is so hard to understand about that? Compare for example the FBIs budget. Then there's Sandia National Laboratories etc, they get much less as well. Not to mention the other things the government has to spend money on, public education being another 'obvious example', though as I don't run a country I don't know all the hundreds of different things that need to be publically funded, or what percentage is necessary for minimum standards in those areas. I repeat, 0.6% of your national budget is truly massive.

P.S. in my original post I meant 'stuff like the war', not 'stuff the war', heh.

You are just an asshole. An asshole that prefers to rape people via proxy to keep your hands "clean", but having the exact same mentality as most rapists. The most common motive for male rapers is revenge or punishing the victim [1].

Oh, and please stop using we like you are claiming to represent everyone.

Ref:
[1] Motives of Reward Among Men Who Rape http://www.ncjrs.gov/App/publications/Abstract.aspx?id=171935

Actually, that wasn't a made up number, though I did forget to link the paper itself. Here it is, direct from the DOJ. Check out the chart on page 9. (2:3:3, not 2:2:3.) Sorry for not making that clearer, though, I should have linked the paper there.

And yes, the 1.5 million number is possibly an overestimation. It's rather impossible to say, unfortunately - a good deal of that aforementioned page 9 discusses the problems involved in getting that number, and why it's probably inaccurate. However, you can't honestly be claiming that it's an overestimation by two orders of magnitude, which is what your original estimate would require.

"Oh, and Slashdot...please stop with the non-sense (sic). most of you are software or hardware nerds. You're not lawyers, doctors or surgeons. Leave the arm-chair medicine to someone more qualified such as my colleagues. Honestly, some of these comments are embarrassing."

Perhaps I could direct your embarrassment to a more appropriate place by drawing your attention to this:

"Ever since the Institute of Medicine released a report in 2000, entitled "To Err is Human," in which it reported that physician error accounted for between 44,000 and 98,000 hospital patient deaths a year in the US, there has been a strong debate in the medical field about when, if and under what conditions physicians ought to apologize to their patients when a mistake in care has been made."

Deaths due to illegal drug use in 1997 were pegged at less than 16,000 by the National Office of Drug Control Policy. It would seem that your colleagues managed to slaughter almost three times as many people as all the illegal drugs in the United States.

http://www.drbilllong.com/CurrentEventsVIII/Apologizing.html and http://www.ncjrs.gov/ondcppubs/publications/policy/ndcs00/chap2_10.html if you want to go look for yourself

A lot of those deaths were the direct result of arrogance, carelessness, stubbornness, and good old-fashioned stupidity, and easily avoidable. A few more could have been prevented if you or your colleagues had shown the courage to speak up when a drunk, senile or otherwise incompetent doctor staggered into the operating room to commit yet another act of manslaughter. Professional courtesy is supposed to have boundaries, though the tone of your "Anonymous Coward" post indicates that you probably don't understand this basic fact. It is also just about statistically certain that many, many cases where death, morbidity or disfigurement resulted have gone unreported, so it's reasonable to assume these horrifying numbers are actually higher.

The last time I looked, us poor, unqualified "armchair medics" hadn't acquired quite the body count you and your colleagues have amassed. And given your attitude (the term "arrogant puppy" comes unavoidably to mind), it seems unlikely that there will be a change in the medical community's tendency to slaughter the innocent any time soon.

I guess what I'm trying to say in my somewhat long-winded, pedantic way is, "Fuck off."

My take on this:

The Meiers toke, the Drews do not, thus preferential treatment by the "Law".

This is a wild guess, but it sure has all the hallmarks of why marijuana is kept illegal in order to provide cover for selective law enforcement and preservation of corrupt political power.

I'd bet that the odds are pretty damn good that the Meiers smoke marijuana and the Drews do not.

The National Criminal Justice Reference Service funds a large amount of criminology/criminal justice research, and as a requirement, the author(s) must submit the article to the NCJRS so that it can be put online for the public. These articles are still published in journals, which are purchased by universities and the such. Why wouldn't a similar system work in the health field? I would think that if anything the health industry would find this particularly useful; easily accessible research would mean more educated health professionals, while most applicable research is simply ignored in the Criminal Justice system.

Department of Justice advice to law enforcement officers investigating crimes where computers are involved
(Blog plug warning)My review of the DOJ computer crime advisory.

Law enforcement has an easier time being clueful now than they did ten or fifteen years ago.

Where do you assume this is physically hardwired?

That is specious and presumptious at best, and intellectually dishonest at worst.

As far as I know there have existed a number of socieities that have been quite permissive of pedophiles and in some cases made it socially expected.

This hardly indicates a hard-wired aversion.

It IS social conditioning of the strongest kind. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing, but you are inventing science to support your moral argument, which is disingenuous.

Ok, now lets actually address what you SAID.

statistics show paedophilia charges and convictions are on the rise.

The only thing that is "obvious" is that media reports of these charges are on the rise.

Please cite statistics that show charges and convictions are on the rise. Or you can simple let me illustrated that you are ignorant of the facts and are simply pontificating on moral grounds with your "epidemic" "on the rise" claims

Here, let me do it for you

Statistics show a decline in child abuse and neglect
The decline in child sex abuse cases
national child abuse and neglect statistics continued to decline
Child-Abuse and Neglect Cases Decline for Fifth Year, HHS Says ...
national child abuse and neglect statistics reported by states continued to decline
Statistics Show Decline in Child Abuse
national child abuse and neglect statistics reported by states continued to decline
total decline of 39% in identified sexual abuse cases over a 7-year period
New Child Maltreatment Statistics Show Continuing Decline
Department of Justice: CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE CASES FALL 31 PERCENT OVER SIX YEARS
he hotline has seen a 24 percent annual decline in child abuse reports

I'm sorry, that's just the first two pages out of about 40 in my google search.

Speaking of head in the sand...

Stewed

If you have proof showing another group that has indiscriminately gone after Americans more often then I would love to see it.

What about clinic bombings or don't you consider that terrorism? What about the KKK?

The most thorought treatment of terroism in the US I could find with a quick google was pdf. FYI, the tables are at the end of the document.

1. Billy starts walking home from bus stop
2. Stranger grabs Billy and forces him into The Van With No Doors and No Windows
3. Stranger drives off.

I feel impelled to point out that events like these are very rare yet most parents seem to believe their children face perils like these every day. (Yes, I am a parent of a 14-year-old girl who, studies show, is a much more likely target for predators than younger children or boys.)

So how about some statistics? Unfortunately the data are quite spotty and the best studies cover the late 90's. The best summary I can find is http://www.ncjrs.gov/html/ojjdp/nismart/05/index.h tml which reports the following:

Key findings presented in the NISMART Bulletin National Estimates of Missing Children: An Overview include the following:

• The total number of children who were missing from their caretakers in 1999 (i.e., their caretakers did not know their whereabouts and were alarmed for at least an hour while trying to locate them) is estimated to be 1,315,600.
• Nearly all of the caretaker missing children (1,312,800 or 99.8 percent) were returned home alive or located by the time the study data were collected. Only a fraction of a percent (0.2 percent or 2,500) of all caretaker missing children had not returned home or been located, and the vast majority of these were runaways from institutions who had been identified in the survey of juvenile residential facilities.
• The number of missing children who were reported missing in 1999 (i.e., reported to the police or missing children's agencies in order to locate them) was estimated to be 797,500, which is equivalent to a rate of 11.4 children per 1,000 in the U.S. population.
• Most of the caretaker missing children became missing because they ran away (48 percent) or because of benign misunderstandings or miscommunications about where they should be (28 percent).
• Children who were missing because they became lost or injured accounted for 15 percent of all caretaker missing children.
• Less than one-tenth (9 percent) of caretaker missing children were abducted by family members, and only 3 percent were abducted by nonfamily perpetrators. [emphasis mine]

Unfortunately information like this doesn't drive people to watch television news shows as does the occasional high-profile kidnapping. You're not going to see many stories about how Janie was reported missing by her parents and turned out to have stayed too long at a friend's house.

Please note that I am not suggesting that crimes against children are not significant. Kidnappings, however, make up a very small fraction of crimes against children. According to http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/181161.pdf, kidnapping represents about 1-2% of all violent crimes against children. From the report, "kidnapping is dwarfed by the much more common crimes of simple and aggravated assault, larceny, and sex offenses, which make up most of the crimes against juveniles."

1. Billy starts walking home from bus stop
2. Stranger grabs Billy and forces him into The Van With No Doors and No Windows
3. Stranger drives off.

I feel impelled to point out that events like these are very rare yet most parents seem to believe their children face perils like these every day. (Yes, I am a parent of a 14-year-old girl who, studies show, is a much more likely target for predators than younger children or boys.)

So how about some statistics? Unfortunately the data are quite spotty and the best studies cover the late 90's. The best summary I can find is http://www.ncjrs.gov/html/ojjdp/nismart/05/index.h tml which reports the following:

Key findings presented in the NISMART Bulletin National Estimates of Missing Children: An Overview include the following:

• The total number of children who were missing from their caretakers in 1999 (i.e., their caretakers did not know their whereabouts and were alarmed for at least an hour while trying to locate them) is estimated to be 1,315,600.
• Nearly all of the caretaker missing children (1,312,800 or 99.8 percent) were returned home alive or located by the time the study data were collected. Only a fraction of a percent (0.2 percent or 2,500) of all caretaker missing children had not returned home or been located, and the vast majority of these were runaways from institutions who had been identified in the survey of juvenile residential facilities.
• The number of missing children who were reported missing in 1999 (i.e., reported to the police or missing children's agencies in order to locate them) was estimated to be 797,500, which is equivalent to a rate of 11.4 children per 1,000 in the U.S. population.
• Most of the caretaker missing children became missing because they ran away (48 percent) or because of benign misunderstandings or miscommunications about where they should be (28 percent).
• Children who were missing because they became lost or injured accounted for 15 percent of all caretaker missing children.
• Less than one-tenth (9 percent) of caretaker missing children were abducted by family members, and only 3 percent were abducted by nonfamily perpetrators. [emphasis mine]

Unfortunately information like this doesn't drive people to watch television news shows as does the occasional high-profile kidnapping. You're not going to see many stories about how Janie was reported missing by her parents and turned out to have stayed too long at a friend's house.

Please note that I am not suggesting that crimes against children are not significant. Kidnappings, however, make up a very small fraction of crimes against children. According to http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/181161.pdf, kidnapping represents about 1-2% of all violent crimes against children. From the report, "kidnapping is dwarfed by the much more common crimes of simple and aggravated assault, larceny, and sex offenses, which make up most of the crimes against juveniles."

What makes you think we're "glorifying these acts"?
Video games don't say these acts are wonderful, great, christ-like or anything like that. The characters in the games ARE NOT role-models. How many children grow thinking they want to become a drug-dealer for a living (except of course for children who meet drug-dealers in real life). These characters get shot at. They die. I'm not sure how you can build a case for "glorifying" (if you can, I'd love to see it).

And what makes you think that restricting access to violent video games will reduce the amount of violent crime?
The most recent statistics I could find (from the US Department of Justice) showed that as of 2002 juvenile crime was at a 15 year low (http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/204608.pdf). During this same period video games became more and more violent and more and more available. Additionally crime had been decreasing since 1997 (The year GoldenEye came out for the N64 and Carmageddon appeared on the PC). If anything these statistics would show a negative coorelation between violent video games and teen violence..