We jail too few, not too many

Barry Day

Err ... 12 people per 1,000 crimes. This takes into account the fact that 1 person may commit multiple crimes does it? 'Cos if it doesn't guvnor, well, it kind of messes up your article. And, pardon me for saying, but surely, mister, as someone who advocates nuking Iran back to the stone age so that we can effectively liberate its people, you would also advocate measures which reduced the prison population and therefore liberate more people? Or is that a bit messy, squire?

Barry Day

Also, that statement, that 'less than 1 percent of all crimes ... result in custodial sentence' - care to expand? What percentage of crimes committed are serious crimes? And what percentage of crimes committed are reported - is that figure you have given 1% of all crimes, or just 1% of reported crimes? C'mon, this is elemental stuff. Furthermore, does it not make you just a tiny wee bit sad that the 'success' of falling American crime rates has meant that unprecedented numbers of people are being locked up? Not just a bit? 1 in 3 black American boys born today will go to prison, even though they live in the wealthiest society in the world today.

Ian C

Barry Day needs to re-read the piece and stop worrying about poor black boys. How does multiple crimes per vilain change the argument? It is simple maths.

PJD

Ian C "How does multiple crimes per vilain change the argument? It is simple maths." Because if one person committed 5 crimes and are in jail then them being in jail only counts once. Lets say there are two countries A & B. Both countries have a population of 10,000 and each had 500 crimes comitted in them. Country A's crimes were comitted by 50 different criminals whereas country B's were comitted by 40 different criminals. All these criminals in both countries are incarcerated. This means that A has imprisoned 100 people per 1000 crimes while B has a rate of 80. So the variance of multple offenders will porentially skew these figures. The rate also doesn't take into account the "crime profile" of each country. A country for example could have a lot of crimes comitted that don't result in a custodial sentence.

Verity

"1 in 3 black American boys born today will go to prison, even though they live in the wealthiest society in the world today." Barry Day, I don't know where you got your figures from and I don't know what "living in the wealthiest society in the world" has to do with anything. If you are suggesting they turn to crime because they are deprived, I suggest you take a quick trip across the Atlantic and see them togged out in their very latest designer gear. They don't steal out of hunger, or because they haven't got a roof over their heads. They steal and sell drugs because they want to be cool and they want to look cool. And they want to do drugs. In other words, they are utterly decadent. There are plenty of gainfully employed black boys from working class families where at least one parent has a job. These aren't the ones that get sent to prison. It's not the skin colour that is the problem. It is the attitude.

Harry B

Simple maths that Barry Day can do, and Ian C can't do, evidently.

Barry Day

"They don't steal out of hunger, or because they haven't got a roof over their heads. They steal and sell drugs because they want to be cool and they want to look cool. And they want to do drugs." Well, there's no arguing with that sort of insightful analysis from Verity.

Dodgy Geezer

Umm... All this is totally meaningless unless you have some way of comparing 'crimes' between countries. The UK has been famous recently for increasing the number of actions deemed 'criminal'. I would lay money that, if a policeman went looking for a crime committed by each of your correspondents, he would find one (particularly if they owned a motor car). The statistics are laughable - we are all criminals in the UK, it's just that some of us have not been found guilty yet.

Jessica

Totally agree with Pollard we have a prison population of eighty odd thousand and a general population of potentially 62 million people it is absolutely too low considering the amount of crimes that are committed.

Michael N

Barry Day, try providing some insight yourself, perhaps minus all the absurd squires and guvnors, and you might have a case for dismissing Verity's point (which, having lived in the USA, I would at least partially agree with.) For example, I have yet to see Pollard advocate nuking Iran back to the stone age, so perhaps you could provide a link to back up your argument, or alternatively learn to use language in the insightful and analytic way that you demand from others, 'squire'. As to your hilarious notion that there is somehow a direct equivalence between liberating a nation from despotic rulers who use religious law to hang rape victims, massacre kurds, and punish homosexuality with torture and death - and releasing criminals from British prisons.... if that's what you call 'insight', I can only laugh. It's not 'messy', squire, it's just ignorant, plain stupid.