Here we are in Croatia, one of the most beautiful coastlines I have ever seen, and I am thinking about crime and punishment. There is such calm and kindness here even after the brutal war that occurred in 1991-3 and extended for a few years more, killing so many and sending the former Yugoslavia reeling. Now Croatia is a place suffering economically but certainly safe. I've heard over 95% of Croatians say they would have no problem walking anywhere in the country at night.
Croatia has about 2,611 prisoners for a population of 4,500,000 whereas my state of Massachusetts has over 21,000 in state, jail and county facilities. –Oh, and we have about 6.6 million folks in the Bay state but our incarceration rate is 7 times as much as Croatia's. Sadly, Massachusetts is not the liberal bastion is appears to be in terms of imprisonment.
Incarceration does not assure safety. According to the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) U.S. states that do not increase their use of incarceration as much as others experience greater drops in crime.
Some other fun facts:
- The U.S. incarcerates the most people in the world and we prosecute people 446 times more than Croatia.
- There are 516 times more car thefts in the U.S. than in Croatia
- A youth is 391 times more likely to commit murder in the U.S. than in Croatia.
Since communities that experience excessive incarceration also experience less safety, it isn't surprising to find this fact: too much incarceration may actually "diminish the ability of residents to protect themselves" says the JPI because removing so many people from a community can affect the "social cohesion" that holds them together. People bring real human capital to helping communities stay safe and if we allow these communities to be destroyed by over-incarceration, aren't we encouraging some the decimation in our neighborhoods?
The only stat where we actually better Croatia is in length of sentence and in Croatia, if someone is found guilty of a crime, he or she is sentenced to an average of 71 years. The length of sentences in Croatia are actually 146 times greater than in the U.S. I'd like to think that's because Croatia puts people in prison who should really be in prison instead of the thousands and thousands of low level drug offenders we incarcerate without blinking an eye. Supposedly Eric Holder wants to curtail such practices but Congress will have to comply.
Meanwhile, I will enjoy my holiday with a sample of the safety and beauty below which will give you an idea of the coastline. And when I come home, I'll post pics in here which I cannot do at the moment. Overusing incarceration helps no one and certainly doesn't keep us safer.