djcb comments on Crime and punishment - Less Wrong

39 Post author: PhilGoetz 24 March 2011 09:53PM

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Comment author: djcb 26 March 2011 11:15:42AM 2 points [-]

Then again, there are more not-so-rich people than rich people. To weigh the ''socio-economic inequality" argument it needs to be shown how criminality correlates with wealth.

(Note that 'socio-economic inequality' is a rather imprecise term here -- it seems that what is meant is something like 'poverty induces crime')

Comment author: prase 26 March 2011 06:10:46PM *  1 point [-]

It can be easily shown how criminality correlates with inequality directly. Let's for example compare the homicide rates (per 100 thousand inhabitatnts per year) in 15 most equal and 15 most inequal countries in the world (measured by Gini index):

Most equal (Gini between 24.7 and 29.2)

  1. Denmark 1.0
  2. Japan 1.0
  3. Sweden 0.89
  4. Czech Rep. 1.9
  5. Norway 0.60
  6. Slovakia 1.7
  7. Bosnia 1.8
  8. Finland 2.5
  9. Hungary 1.4
  10. Ukraine 5.4
  11. Germany 0.86
  12. Slovenia 0.55
  13. Croatia 1.7
  14. Austria 0.55
  15. Bulgaria 2.3

Most inequal (Gini between 74.3 and 53.8)

  1. Namibia 18
  2. Lesotho 37
  3. Sierra Leone 2.6
  4. Central African Rep. 30
  5. Botswana 12
  6. Bolivia 11
  7. Haiti 22
  8. Colombia 35
  9. Paraguay 12
  10. South Africa 34
  11. Brazil 22
  12. Panama 13
  13. Guatemala 52
  14. Chile 1.7
  15. Honduras 67

The data are from Wikipedia. There may be some caveats (e.g. some countries include attempted murders in the count while others don't), but the overall correlation is easily visible.

Comment author: omslin 26 March 2011 11:16:29PM *  0 points [-]

In rich countries, there are strong correlations between income inequality and imprisonment rates (graph), and between income inequality and homicide rates (graph). As for selection bias, the authors of the graphs took the 50 richest countries over population 3 million for which data was available. Data sources here.

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