Additionally Noted Things

by Cliopatria

K-zoo, k-zoo, k-zoo! Gesundheit! Michael Tinkler, the Cranky Professor, and Lisa Spangenberg at Digital Medievalist: Scéla report on the bloggers' roundtable at the International Congress on Medieval Studies. [ed.: why does my spellcheck keep correcting"bloggers" to"boogers"?]

Tim Burke live-blogs (one, two, three) the Social Computing Symposium 2006 sponsored by Microsoft Research.

Here's a link to Benny Morris,"And Now for Some Facts," TNR, 8 May, on the Mearsheimer and Walt controversy. If that doesn't work for you, Judith Klinghoffer reproduces it in full.

Roy Warmsley of King's College London's International Centre for Prison Studies maintains a"World Prison Population List." Its latest, the sixth edition, presents some fascinating and disturbing data. Of the world's 9 million prisoners, nearly half are in the United States, China, or Russia. Listing prison population per hundred thousand national population, it finds the United States, at 714, at the top of the list by far, followed by Belarus, Bermuda, and Russia at 532. Nearly 3/5 of the nation/states have prison populations at less than 150 per hundred thousand national population, with England and Wales at 142. The report also identifies remarkable regional contrasts in the world's prison population. Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for the tip, but he does misrepresent the data. There's no cause to go all Jim Lindgren on Michael Bellesiles about it, but I'm just sayin' ...

Which reminds me to welcome Jim Lindgren's visit to Cliopatria. It's occasioned by a blogospheric clash of titans: Belle Waring v Eugene Volokh. As Jim says, check out the comments. One of my favorites is his citation of Catherine McKinnon in defense of Volokh! Lindgren cites McKinnon for the defense! It's like – well – it's like Lindgren citing McKinnon in defense of Volokh!
On another front, it is Ohio State University historian Christopher Phelps v Eugene Volokh.

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Jason T. Kuznicki - 5/9/2006

"Sure, drug traffic is a major factor, but I think you'd have to consider some others, such as wealth and poverty. How many nation/states could afford to imprison so large a percentage of its population? How many nation/states have such a dramatic contrast of wealth and poverty in large numbers as our own?"

Certainly, we hardly notice the expense of imprisoning many people who do not belong in prison, and therefore the injustice of it seems less obvious to us. I don't doubt it's a factor. Yet where are Japan and Switzerland on this list? They're far, far removed from the top, despite being comparable in wealth.

But as to the gap between rich and poor, I have some difficulties here. Many countries have much more severe gaps between the rich and the poor, yet still have lower incarceration rates -- and, at any rate, being poor is both 1) vastly more pleasant in the U.S. than in Africa and 2) not a crime here.

At the risk of sounding pedantic, there are literally hundreds of thousands of people in prison for simple nonviolent drug offenses; there is not a single one behind bars solely for being poor.

Of course, it's certainly true that poverty usually means a relative inability to find good legal counsel, a greater likelihood of prejudice against the accused, and so forth. All the more important, then, that we imprison only for genuine crimes, and not for purely medical problems like nonviolent drug addiction.

I think the real explanation for the numbers, even taking these aggravating factors into account, is that we have pursued the war on drugs far more rabidly, and with far more resources, than any other nation.

Abandoning the war on drugs, and freeing nonviolent drug offenders, would mean a vastly lower incarceration rate. It would also help the poor, by reuninting many of the poor families who suffer disproportionately under these laws. (This alone would likely do much to lift them out of poverty, too.)

Ralph E. Luker - 5/9/2006

Jason, He's got Russia's # of prisoners per hundred thousand population wrong and ignores the fact that Belarus and Bermuda are tied with Russia, well ahead of Cuba. As I _said_, no big deal.
Sure, drug traffic is a major factor, but I think you'd have to consider some others, such as wealth and poverty. How many nation/states could afford to imprison so large a percentage of its population? How many nation/states have such a dramatic contrast of wealth and poverty in large numbers as our own?

Jason T. Kuznicki - 5/9/2006

How exactly do you think Andrew Sullivan is misrepresenting this data? I'm afraid I don't see what you mean.

Meanwhile, if I were commenting on the data, I'd note just how many of these people are nonviolent drug offenders, and I'd suggest as strongly as possible that perhaps our chosen remedy is far worse than the disease itself.

Jonathan Dresner - 5/9/2006

Well, if Klinghoffer's good for nothing else, her blatant disregard of subscription limitations is sometimes quite useful.

I don't think Lindgren quite understands how marginal McKinnon is within feminist movements or theory. He thinks it's a slam-dunk to cite "a feminist" but it's like citing "a conservative" or "a Jew": they're not all equally important to the discussion. A lot of feminists that I'm aware of consider her work to be quite problematic and difficult to integrate....