from Hacker News

The 1% of the population accountable for 63 % of all violent crime convictions (2013)

by dataminer on 5/15/23, 1:59 AM with 220 comments

• by anonymouskimmer on 5/15/23, 2:48 AM

  Most important thing: This was a study of the Swedish population!

  For the US population:

  Convictions include innocent people who follow advice to plea guilty [1], or who are wrongfully convicted [2], and don't include guilty people who got off, or who were never found [3].

  [1] - https://www.npr.org/2023/02/22/1158356619/plea-bargains-crim...

  [2] - https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/7/14834454/ex...

  > “African Americans are only 13% of the American population but a majority of innocent defendants wrongfully convicted of crimes and later exonerated,” the researchers write. “They constitute 47% of the 1,900 exonerations listed in the National Registry of Exonerations (as of October 2016), and the great majority of more than 1,800 additional innocent defendants who were framed and convicted of crimes in 15 large-scale police scandals and later cleared in ‘group exonerations.’”

  [3] - https://www.insider.com/police-dont-solve-most-violent-prope...

  > Federal government data from 2018 show that just 46% of all violent crimes reported to police were "cleared" with an arrest, and 18% of property crimes were cleared. Beyond that, only an estimated 43% of people who were the victims of violent crimes reported the incidents to police.

  I expect this article to get flagged pretty soon.

• by selcuka on 5/15/23, 2:25 AM

  I am not a statistician, but I don't know if this figure is very interesting. The article says that "3.9% had at least one violent conviction", so it is kind of expected that 1% (i.e. 25.6% of that 3.9%) to have multiple convictions. Yeah, it's a bit skewed (63%) but still doesn't sound totally unexpected to me.

  The Odds Ratio of 2.5 for male offenders is actually more interesting.

• by rayiner on 5/15/23, 2:36 AM

  This is quite apparent if you have experience with the criminal justice system. When there is a conviction in federal court, the Bureau of Prisons creates a pre-sentence report (PSR) listing the convictions, arrests, etc. These are incredible to read. Not only are there usually prior convictions. But in many cases, there are outstanding arrest warrants for crimes other jurisdictions won’t even bother prosecuting as a result of the conviction.

• by zoklet-enjoyer on 5/15/23, 2:28 AM

  Most people aren't violent. Or not to the point that they can't control it. The ones who can't control it though, they punch above their weight.

• by 1270018080 on 5/15/23, 2:31 AM

  Summary for those who don't want to click: "The majority of violent crimes are perpetrated by a small number of persistent violent offenders, typically males, characterized by early onset of violent criminality, substance abuse, personality disorders, and nonviolent criminality."

  So in theory if we purge the bottom 1% of the population every decade or so, there will be at least 63% less crime?

• by fatneckbeard on 5/15/23, 2:38 AM

  if they went back before 1973... you know, say, 1939... might have some different statistics about who is responsible for violence in Sweden.

• by photochemsyn on 5/15/23, 2:37 AM

  The most obvious solution to this problem is to direct prosecutors and police to focus all their efforts on violent crime prevention.

  However, this avoids the problems associated with harmful nonviolent crime, such as the fraud scams targeting the elderly and other vulnerable populations that you've probably seen on your social media feeds, messaging apps, etc., let alone things like crypto coin scams and subprime loans and on and on.

  Of course, eliminating all nonviolent drug abuse issues from the criminal docket and passing them on to the public health infrastructure (see Portugal) might free up resources to deal with both violent crime and property fraud.

• by jimbob45 on 5/15/23, 2:17 AM

  in the Swedish population 1973–2004

• by beefman on 5/15/23, 2:31 AM

  My comment when this was last posted, in 2018

  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16348644

• by givemeethekeys on 5/15/23, 2:44 AM

  Some related wisdom that has been more useful for me: 5% of the people out there are assholes - the unsafe drivers, the "can I speak to the manager" customers, the sociopathic case workers ... they're all in that 5%. You're bound to run into them, and they're bound to make an attempt to spoil your day. Learn to shake your head, shrug it off and go about your day knowing that 5% of all people are assholes.

• by Helithumper on 5/15/23, 2:18 AM

  (2013)

• by tomlockwood on 5/15/23, 2:19 AM

  One of the most interesting things to me is the racists that insist that we should examine all demographic factors when trying to identify who the criminals are, but they shy away from the pure fact that violent crime is almost exclusively perpetuated by men. And yet, there are no calls from them for a restriction on male immigration.

• by oatmeal1 on 5/15/23, 2:23 AM

  Banishment needs to be brought back as a form of punishment. The 99% cannot let the 1% ruin it for everyone. We need penal colony Australia 2.0.