Re:United States incarceration rate
by yummyfajitas on Sunday June 09, 2013 @04:54PM
(#5850551)
I'm assuming a 1% difference could exist holding everything else constant simply to make the example simple. I explicitly disclaimed the idea that my thought experiment was a good picture of the world.
My key point - looking at incarceration rates while ignoring criminality rates is ignoring half the picture. Do you disagree with this point?
You're assuming a 1% absolute difference could easily exist given equal laws, enforcement, and penalties. If you say you're just asserting that for purposes of the experiment, you still can't say anything because the assertion may well be nonsense.
You're assuming you can tease it apart (e.g. existing laws and enforcement's influence on criminal culture) such that stats are "missing", it's not clear that you can. In fact, evidence (prohibition) more likely says you can't.