I remember when I was young, maybe 10 or 11, my dad went to prison for a short stint. When we finally had a chance to talk to him, I remember being so jealous because he had name-brand fruit loops for breakfast and a full lunch and dinner. We were terribly poor and the idea of 3 meals in the summer instead of 2, with name brands, was mind boggling. And the reason he was arrested? A well off "nice" lady down the street stole our f-in dog, he yelled at her to give Dita (the dog) back, and she called the cops. He was charged with assault and destruction of property (he rattled the fence gate). His public defender had 6 cases THAT DAY, because he was one of 2 for the whole little county in nowheresville Kansas. Couldnt do a damn thing, my dad was big and mean, a welder and a drunk with a bit of a rough reputation so it was assumed that everything the lady said was gospel.
People will not listen to what they don't want to hear. From my experience and research this video is only giving facts. Let the hate comments and internet PhDs begin
Wow, this is "Crash Course", which is for those who are interested but don't have a chance study it as a major, not some kinds of deep-research and professional informations. If you want that, go to university
most of the info seemed consistent however. i want to point out that this focused allot of the race metric. that if i took the same data and used the same methods in this video i could show a similar correlation to male vs female incarceration that was missed by this video. And seemed to be dismissed as just men commit more crime without focusing on the why of male incarceration rates.
The first part of problem solving is to recognise there is a problem. Looking through the comments it is obvious that many don't even believe there is a problem despite the stats. How you get over that hurdle I have no idea but it is an enormous and compounding problem that needs to be addressed.
I have been reading "The Better Angels of Our Nature" by Steven Pinker which covered much of this very subject. I had just finished the chapter "The Civilizing Process" a few days ago, of which the final 45 pages of the chapter are relevant to this subject. I highly recommend the book to anyone interested in this topic.
You guys did a great job of covering this topic for the current state of corrections in the US. I would love to see someone @ CrashCourse expand upon this topic for other nations, much like healthcare triage once did for the types of healthcare systems in various nations across the world.
CrashCourse has just committed a great injustice by not mentioning the HIGHLY important fact that if prisons were run for rehabilitation of prisoners (as in: trying to make them a better person, like a guy you would be okay with having as your neighbor, they are coming back to society sometime afterall) we would CUT the rate of re-arrest down by more than TWICE the current rate mentioned in the video. Just take a look at Norway and the policies they have implemented to treat our prisoners with some respect and human dignity, which in the end goes a long way. We have the lowest rate of re-arrest and overall crime, and this is because instead of treating people like animals we show them that we want to help, not hurt them more. buuut as we all know most people are way too stupid to realize this and the US will probably never learn x)
haakzyker Maybe start by implementing this policy in a few prisons, and use the results to show that it produces better results? I think that might convince a significant amount of people. There will be holdouts, of course, so we'd have to understand why they're resistant to that viewpoint since we won't be able to convince them otherwise.
Norway is very homogeneous ethnically and culturally with a much smaller population which makes everything easier. Also not having to pay for your military and heavy taxes gives them that luxury. The US will never designate such a vast amount of money necessary for rehabilitation given the make up of their society. Projects in Scandinavian countries are social experiments in as controlled conditions as you can get that cannot be applied to the rest of the world
First, I think it isn't fair to say "CrashCourse has just committed a great injustice by...". Are they responsible for everything they do not cover/mention? If yes, then not only should they not be called Crash Course (because covering everything is not at all viewed as a 'crash course') but they would also have to spend more resources/efforts in making videos that are free, which in my subjective opinion, is asking for ALOT. Second (and I personally feel this isn't the meat of the matter), that does not sound a 'fact'. It sounds great, but I won't say that it's completely a fact. While I'm not at all aware or familiar with the situation, I think it would be fair for me to say that this is a fact for countries that are doing so, and that the results show as such. That's as far as it goes, but a fact is something like: Population-wise, China is larger than Antarctica. As much as I disagree with you saying "the US will probably never learn", I hope the US and every other country (I don't live in the US) does improve their ways of addressing crimes and review what can be done for those who have committed crimes.
I think this is one of those "the logic is great but the reality is much different" scenarios. The American Criminal Institution system is way beyond the point of redeemable. As bad as it might sound, the issue really boils down to cultural inadequacies and ethnical demographics. Simple math is (too much-uncontrolled crime)+( cultural issues)-(little government subsidising =Little to no change if not worse numbers. Truth is, It's no longer about rehabilitation, it's just containment policy now.
9:04 The prison system has plenty of resources, rehabilitation fails because the government wants it to; private contracting of prison labour is big business nowadays.
I feel like it's also worth noting that Norway isn't as diverse as America, so Norway doesn't have to deal with much of what was stated in the video. That said, I feel like America should use Norway's accomplishment as a goal.
This is a very US centric episode - All the stats quoted were very US specific, with the overall episode seemingly focused on discussing criminality within a society rather than within sociology theory. Case studies are useful methods are explaining theory, but without the underlying theory behind the case study (Which could be coming next week for all I know) seems to be of highly limited utility. (Also a single case study of an extreme example - as you pointed out 5x the prison population relative to population population of most countries - rather than comparitive case studies or a more typical example also limits things, particularly when you've got examples of countries which are making international news due to repurposing prisons into offices and the entertainment sector due to how little they're being used as, well, prisons)
@Student Samuel Ma Because the FBI is conducting a sum of all crimes of all states. Norway is the size of Florida or North Carolina. its the equivalent of one US state. The comparison is highly dissimilar. You would need to compare the entire EU to the United States to get a fair and accurate comparison.
This is another great episode but it would have been great to see a side-by-side comparison of our approach and Europeans. Also, regarding the FBI data, its data is collected over a year but how many times might one individual get counted across categories or even within a given category? i.e. commit theft... 3mon sentence... commit theft again. Lastly, what about individuals that are found innocent in court? Are the FBI numbers for convictions only? Sorry for all the questions. :p
No sociology is science it has predictive models that work like the "poorer the people the more crime they commit on avg." meme comes out of sociology.
David Fischer How is sociology not a science? It uses the scientific method, that is really all you need. Whether the results are always valid is another question, like in any science, they will have to be tested and the methodology and theory questioned. Sociology is just the study of society, what I find is that most people criticing it are not opposed to it in itself, but to all the theories used within it. Also, science has always been political, eg. climate change and its existance is hige political topic in the USA. Than there are of course regulations informed by the science on the given subject.
Because it often involves a lot of cherry picked statistics that don't conform with reality and BS studies. You also can't just state that racism or the patriarchy exist because you found statistics.
David Fischer I like your points. There valid and they make sense. But allow me to throw in my two cents here. How would you define science? I would say it's a subject that we use the scientific method on, right? I mean that's fairly equivocal, but I don't really know any better way to state it. A science is a field of study that employs the scientific method and produces objective results. I would argue sociology is a science, it's a new science that hasn't quite evolved yet. It hasn't been around long enough for valid methods or tools for gathering information to be discovered. There's a difference between a science and a pseudo-science. Take, for example, Freudian Psychology. It's great and all, but does it have data backing it up? No, not really. Freud was making assumptions based on, well, very little data. Sociology isn't the same thing. It does have data backing it up, at least in some cases. I'm pretty sure most educated people would agree on the validity of the ingroup-outgroup phenomenon. Sociology just lacks a lot of data and the ways to obtain that data. I think it is (or at least will be) a science, it just need a little more time; you can't make valid claims about astronomy without a telescope (you can but I hope you get my point) in the same way you can't make valid sociological claims without valid methods to obtain that data. And because we're working with people, well that's pretty hard to get. And think of it this way: sometimes, we can't directly see results. Sometimes we have to interpret what we see in order to reach conclusions. I mean as far as I know, we can't actually see quarks, we just have data that support their existence. And to be clear, I'm not saying that data always point to causation. Just because a certain group of people is arrested more than others does not mean anyone is treating that group differently, nor does it necessarily mean that those people are acting any differently, but there is a cause somewhere. Most people don't want to accept it as just a coincidence. I hope that IAT tests and other "innovations" will one day help us understand why these things happen, but for now, all we have are educated assumptions (some of which are more educated than others). I don't think it's right to say something like "white is associated with non-criminality" because there isn't much to support that. That's my two cents. More like three cents; I typed a little too much I hope that's comprehensible and doesn't ruffle any feathers. DFTBA everyone!
Science as something concrete and can be easily tested and doesn't change. There is science on climate change, but we also don't have all of the facts so human bias interjected which is pseudoscience. Statistics on social interaction and individuals is not verifiable and changes over time and from place to place. There may be some validity to "findings" from sociology but it's even less concrete than climate science because individuals aren't as simple as their demographics.
There's another reason for incarceration: suppression. Many minority voters tend not to vote Republican, and Republicans are overwhelmingly in favor of 'tough-on-crime' policies, which have the effect of jailing more people. As you've stated above, mass incarceration hits minority peoples the hardest. Paul Weyrich pointed something out in 1980. He said that Republican political power grows as the voting population goes down. Since 1980, the Republican party has been single-mindedly in favor of these tough-on-crime policies, voter suppression tactics like ID laws, and removing convicted felons' rights to vote. All of which drive down the voting population. This, combined with simple greed as for-profit prisons have increasingly taken over state facilities, has contributed to the constantly rising prison population despite historically low crime rates.
This was an amazing and thoroughly comprehensive episode! You even unveiled the follies people often make when discussing the problems involving crime rates related to persons. Very impressive.
This was great. A heap of info packed in to a short vid. I'd really love to see an Australian version of this with Australian stats. Cheers, (🇦🇺💙❤an aussie criminology student)
And they usually offer a get out of jail at the cost of years of probation plus a charge on your record which will make it very hard to rent or get a job card. Most people take it (guilty or not). Sometimes they don't even give you the deal they promise. And when the judge asks you, "were you promised anything in return for your plea?", boy do they get mad when you tell them you were promised to be released.
very good video, considering this topic is insanely big and has many areas to discuss. You still raised awareness to a couple of sides which may not be obvious otherwise.
Great vid. Talked about rehabilitation extensively in a debate course. Live in the fiery red south and no one cared but it was still good. Pulled a lot of these same stats!
Recidivism numbers are misleading because of how they are calculated. If you calculate it based on people leaving, you end up counting repeat offenders far more than if you calculate it based on everyone who ever goes to prison. Most people who go to prison do not go back to prison (i.e. they only go once). But in a one year time span, if you count everyone who leaves prison in that period, a majority will come back. That is due to repeat offenders being over-represented in leaving and coming back, because the ones that don't come back...don't come back, and therefore are only counted once. Here's a longer explanation: www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2015/10/why_do_so_many_prisoners_end_up_back_in_prison_a_new_study_says_maybe_they.html People quote recidivism numbers because they are shocking. But they don't give an accurate picture of whether prison is a deterrent. It is with some people, and it's not with others. The problem with both cases is that, due to people getting fed up with repeat offenders, our prison sentences are both too long for the people who will not come back anyway even with a short sentence, and too inadequate for repeat offenders, who need far more than a prison sentence to get their life back on track. So we need both shorter sentences (because the diminishing returns on long sentences is staggering), and to devote the saved resources to the repeat offenders who need serious intervention (such as social/cultural skills, drug treatment, job training, and trauma therapy). With these changes we could create a long-term reduction in crime and create a healthier, saner society with far less imprisonment.
Everytime people from social science ask "why" a social situation is just like it is and make a research based on statistics to find out the reason and try to solve it, people appears to take it as a simple "opinion" and not science. Science deniers have come to a whole new level.
the problem i have with this video (one of them at least) is that i thought that it would teach about how the crime is born, not about the social differences between the people arrested. It should have another title like "crime on different clases" or whatever, because that title is misleading about the actual content of the video
This was a brilliant discussion. I would have enjoyed more worldly examples of how other societies besides the U.S. treat and examine criminals (past or present), but focusing on our nation's apparent discrimination towards people of color really intrigued me. It always seems that when America is close to achieving progression as a nation, somehow another group has to be bonded for being the wrong skin tone.
I don't understand why they didn't talk more about how to prevent crime. Sure they talked a lot about how jail and prison affects people. But they never mentioned what policies reduce crime. Even the part "Are tough on crime policies affective" didn't talk about deterrence for people who haven't committed crimes before.
Still confused with numbers like 80 billion spent annually on corrections as to how that is not enough money to attempt more rehabilitation programs. If the cost on the nation could be as high as 500 billion for the aggregate burden of incarceration, this seems like there should be even more of an incentive to attempt to use more of the funding for rehabilitation programs. Sadly, some scholars will often use the "not enough funding" as an excuse for failed policies and programs or as a method of getting more funding to waste on such failed policies and programs.
you guys forgot the % of people arrested for victimless crimes... im almost sure that is a lot more people incarcerated because of that, then proprety crimes or against a person... without government who would put such violente no-victim criminals in jail..
you're right actually over half of all people in jail are there for non-violent drug offenses like "possession with intent to sell" or simple "possession of an illicit substances" .
IAnCap well you misunderstand the concept that people charged with these "victimless" crimes are also perpetrators of violent and property crimes but weren't caught and/or are part of those stats that 47% of those aren't reported.
It's strange...Criminology is one of those subjects that can't "fix" an issue and so much as provide some ways to try and "improve" the situation. And with good reason, the problems are so insurmountable because of the issues we are facing are arbitrary chaotic, that is; human nature. It's the same pattern but in different shades of colour. I made this quote up in my head a few years ago that goes like " the law is holistic in nature, but individual in application" and as it is, that's too difficult to maintain.
I don't know if you have already addressed some of the leading causes of crime yet, or if you are going to, but that would be cool if you did. Please don't forget to mention how capitalism's false scarcity is the leading cause of most crimes.
What about crimes committed outside the United States? Not all justice systems are the same and in 3rd world countries, corruption messes with the system and often helps the offender more than the victim.
Missing the part in which corporations do business putting people in prisons making money, bigger sentences more money for corporations that care for convicts.
So I'm genuinely curious, how do we know that the majority of arrests don't have less to do with race and more to do with poverty? Or more likely it is a combination? I realize that even minorities in the "upper class" get discriminated against... but I'm just wondering how we know for sure which factors have the biggest impact.
i had to slow her down a little bit so i could take some damn notes...i have her on -0.5 speed .....this is literally exactly the chapter at uni that i've just read
so next time please give us more relative funny breaks. i don't know about anyone else, but crash course is a good learning supplement resource for me because I'm a visual learner and I tend to get distracted. those strategic changes of pace and well placed relative jokes that the history guy utilizes really help. now if thats not you, i understand. its best to keep your own style. however, i'm going to have to hit the pause button or replay button once or twice. don't judge me, learning is not a one pace thing. people like me get stuck when we quit because of what others think. fortunately, I don't care what others think.
I hate what this society has become. I hate the fact that race is such a significant thing. In my opinion, everyone should love and accept and not judge anyone else because then the world would be a much better place! I am friends with people of all kinds of different social classes. I have friends that are lower class, upper class, middle class, it makes no difference to me! I am friends with African Americans, Mexicans, and white Americans. It does not matter to me, because if they are a good person, then I like them. To me it does not matter what is on the outside, to me its all about if they have a good heart.
OMG. After watching the entire video, most of my previous comment is trivial. (Rigor is not trivial.) As a former prosecutor, I guarantee that this video does not come close to describing the horror of the contemporary criminal justice system. Things are much worse than described here. A major problem with this video is the framing of the issues. The discussion of the goals of punishment is textbook Anglo-American, and it's wrong. Those four goals are still presented as the goals of the system, but there are emphatically not the true goals. The presenter accidentally admitted this when she said that reintegration into society is the same as rehabilitation. Those are different goals. Reintegration has never been part of the official goals of US punishment. So, the first framing problem is using the intellectual framework of contemporary Anglo-American jurists even though the intellectual framework is laughably dissimilar from reality. The second problem is using that framework without understanding what it means. For example, conflating reintegration with rehabilitation. Third, the entire narrative in this video is exactly the narrative of those who hold the power. This was not a discussion of crime. This was a discussion of crime using the definitions and perspectives of those who benefit from the current system. For a simple and easy to access contrast, look at crime during armed conflict, especially the doctrine of command responsibility. This video about crime is almost completely useless when trying to understand crime during an armed conflict. By discussing crime with the framework of the powerful, the conclusions are predetermined. If this video is representative of how the majority of contemporary US sociologists perceive, analyze, and describe crime then the majority of contemporary US sociologists are unwitting accomplices in this epidemic of oppression, dehumanization, and pain. Our species is screwed.
Can you make a video on the intersectionality between racial profiling and "benevolent" sexism? Can you analyse the criminal behavior of men and women and demonstrate how this pans out in the legal system, with sentence time, et cetera? I expect that the cultural perception of black men as hypermasculine contributes to their disproportional criminalization. These cycles of Injustice are infuriating.
In general I have enjoyed but this series, but this episode seemed to have an underling rhetoric. She seemed to be saying that having more people in prison didn't prevent crime. She gave re-offending statistics as evidence for this. But earlier she said since the 90's reported crime has decreased. Yes she states that COULD be due to lack of reporting said crimes but gave no evidence to support that hypothesis. I think they should aim to be more neutral in the future, All in all though keep up the good work!
There's a lot wrong with US's penal system, punishment seems to amount to "you did something bad (regardless of whether it should actually be considered bad), and so now bad stuff happens to you". It doesn't help anyone, it causes exponentially more problems than it solves. The goal should always be to make "criminals" into productive members of society- but that can't happen, at least not long term, until the reason they committed the crime in the first place is properly addressed. People generally only break rules when it's too inconvenient to follow them- in a "deck stacked against them" kind of way, not a laziness way.
You overlooked the 'maintaining the validity of the law' approach in your explanation of the purpose of punishment. It makes it look like you are only considering specific prevention theories. Do american law schools not even teach general prevention? I mean, it's clear that your legal system doesn't follow the theory, but I'm starting to wonder if it's even taught.
The might come to a surprise to white folks but I'm a 63 y/o black man who never been in jail. I know what your thinking. "Thats ethnically impossible!"
has there been a study on which races tend to be involved more in gangs and gang related activity? From Hells angels to skin heads to siranyo's adn ofcourse crips and bloods.. ??
Long prison sentences say over 5 years are in my opinion counter productive and a waste for both society and the criminal. I think that if it is judged that the person deserves at least 5 years in prison they should be executed instead since they are most likely going to spend the rest of their lives in and out of prison. For those sentenced to prison society needs to take more responsibility in reintegrating them back in, to minimize recidivism and reduce institutionalization. In addition if the criminal has not prepared to re-enter society and are still deemed a threat perhaps at 5 or 7 years of incarceration they should perhaps be executed. If this were the case that society took more responsibility to give criminals the opportunity to change and rejoin society and that if it is determined that the criminal cannot safely rejoin society they are executed it may have the effect of reducing criminal behavior to near zero. One of the reasons that I think long sentences are detrimental is that it seems to me that those who survive prison almost always need to develop a criminal mentality to survive the experience regardless how criminally minded they were upon entry. After all the way things stand prisons are criminal societies.
Are males overcriminalized? I've read some real horror stories about male victims in abuse getting arrested. Not to mention their Overrepresentation in prisons. I discourage all comments not looking at this through a logical/scientific lens. And no calling names. Thank you.
I know this was 4 months ago but since you didn't get much of a response, i just wanted to share a point i covered in class. (will link source if i can find it) Men are more likely to commit certain types of crime due to socialisation and they may be those which are likely to lead to a prison sentence, over a community payback or probationary program, so men will make up a higher proportion in that sense. Women are also more likely to have their stories listened to (eg, why they offended against another, mental health plea etc) and taken into account, thereby gaining more lax punishments, more than men (fitting in with societal expectations of rationale behind the actions of their gender) BUT when they commit a seemingly meaningless or 'evil' crime (think child abuse or more disconnected murders) they tend to get much harsher sentences than men with the same charge. Basically, both men and women are treated by the judicial system according to societal gender expectations but when there is deviation from the norm, it seems that is more strongly punished, rather than simply the crime itself.
Can someone please make a crash course criminology series? I would pay to see that.
AgreE
As a criminology student I 100% agree
Agree
that would be super helpful
Yes please. I’m studying criminology and these give me way more information than my university.
I remember when I was young, maybe 10 or 11, my dad went to prison for a short stint. When we finally had a chance to talk to him, I remember being so jealous because he had name-brand fruit loops for breakfast and a full lunch and dinner. We were terribly poor and the idea of 3 meals in the summer instead of 2, with name brands, was mind boggling. And the reason he was arrested? A well off "nice" lady down the street stole our f-in dog, he yelled at her to give Dita (the dog) back, and she called the cops. He was charged with assault and destruction of property (he rattled the fence gate). His public defender had 6 cases THAT DAY, because he was one of 2 for the whole little county in nowheresville Kansas. Couldnt do a damn thing, my dad was big and mean, a welder and a drunk with a bit of a rough reputation so it was assumed that everything the lady said was gospel.
But did you get your dog back!?
honestly, crash course sociology is probably my favourite series so far☺
People will not listen to what they don't want to hear. From my experience and research this video is only giving facts. Let the hate comments and internet PhDs begin
Newtoschool your experience maybe different than other people
Wow, this is "Crash Course", which is for those who are interested but don't have a chance study it as a major, not some kinds of deep-research and professional informations. If you want that, go to university
your experience and epistemological viewpoints are lacking
She left out some facts. Take a look at FBI crime statistics table 43A.
most of the info seemed consistent however. i want to point out that this focused allot of the race metric. that if i took the same data and used the same methods in this video i could show a similar correlation to male vs female incarceration that was missed by this video. And seemed to be dismissed as just men commit more crime without focusing on the why of male incarceration rates.
The first part of problem solving is to recognise there is a problem. Looking through the comments it is obvious that many don't even believe there is a problem despite the stats. How you get over that hurdle I have no idea but it is an enormous and compounding problem that needs to be addressed.
I have been reading "The Better Angels of Our Nature" by Steven Pinker which covered much of this very subject. I had just finished the chapter "The Civilizing Process" a few days ago, of which the final 45 pages of the chapter are relevant to this subject.
I highly recommend the book to anyone interested in this topic.
You guys did a great job of covering this topic for the current state of corrections in the US. I would love to see someone @ CrashCourse expand upon this topic for other nations, much like healthcare triage once did for the types of healthcare systems in various nations across the world.
I'm about to collect some rain water, which is illegal where I live. Welp, guess I'm a low-down dirty criminal.
CrashCourse has just committed a great injustice by not mentioning the HIGHLY important fact that if prisons were run for rehabilitation of prisoners (as in: trying to make them a better person, like a guy you would be okay with having as your neighbor, they are coming back to society sometime afterall) we would CUT the rate of re-arrest down by more than TWICE the current rate mentioned in the video.
Just take a look at Norway and the policies they have implemented to treat our prisoners with some respect and human dignity, which in the end goes a long way. We have the lowest rate of re-arrest and overall crime, and this is because instead of treating people like animals we show them that we want to help, not hurt them more.
buuut as we all know most people are way too stupid to realize this and the US will probably never learn x)
haakzyker Maybe start by implementing this policy in a few prisons, and use the results to show that it produces better results? I think that might convince a significant amount of people. There will be holdouts, of course, so we'd have to understand why they're resistant to that viewpoint since we won't be able to convince them otherwise.
Norway is very homogeneous ethnically and culturally with a much smaller population which makes everything easier. Also not having to pay for your military and heavy taxes gives them that luxury. The US will never designate such a vast amount of money necessary for rehabilitation given the make up of their society. Projects in Scandinavian countries are social experiments in as controlled conditions as you can get that cannot be applied to the rest of the world
First, I think it isn't fair to say "CrashCourse has just committed a great injustice by...". Are they responsible for everything they do not cover/mention? If yes, then not only should they not be called Crash Course (because covering everything is not at all viewed as a 'crash course') but they would also have to spend more resources/efforts in making videos that are free, which in my subjective opinion, is asking for ALOT.
Second (and I personally feel this isn't the meat of the matter), that does not sound a 'fact'. It sounds great, but I won't say that it's completely a fact. While I'm not at all aware or familiar with the situation, I think it would be fair for me to say that this is a fact for countries that are doing so, and that the results show as such. That's as far as it goes, but a fact is something like: Population-wise, China is larger than Antarctica.
As much as I disagree with you saying "the US will probably never learn", I hope the US and every other country (I don't live in the US) does improve their ways of addressing crimes and review what can be done for those who have committed crimes.
I think this is one of those "the logic is great but the reality is much different" scenarios. The American Criminal Institution system is way beyond the point of redeemable. As bad as it might sound, the issue really boils down to cultural inadequacies and ethnical demographics. Simple math is (too much-uncontrolled crime)+( cultural issues)-(little government subsidising =Little to no change if not worse numbers. Truth is, It's no longer about rehabilitation, it's just containment policy now.
@@thetruesora2111 I like your thinking
9:04 The prison system has plenty of resources, rehabilitation fails because
the government wants it to; private contracting of prison labour is big business nowadays.
these videos are literally the reason i am passing my soci. 101 class lol THANK YOU!!
Loved this episode's thought bubble
Thank you! People need to watch this video and really get educated. Because schools really don't teach you things like this.
Social status like employment, criminal history, education,of the defendants makes a huge difference in the punishment
Very informative video as usual. Thank you!
Norway be like, "we have achieved rehabilitating criminals! Take that America!!!"
Sad bro.
I feel like it's also worth noting that Norway isn't as diverse as America, so Norway doesn't have to deal with much of what was stated in the video. That said, I feel like America should use Norway's accomplishment as a goal.
This is a very US centric episode - All the stats quoted were very US specific, with the overall episode seemingly focused on discussing criminality within a society rather than within sociology theory. Case studies are useful methods are explaining theory, but without the underlying theory behind the case study (Which could be coming next week for all I know) seems to be of highly limited utility. (Also a single case study of an extreme example - as you pointed out 5x the prison population relative to population population of most countries - rather than comparitive case studies or a more typical example also limits things, particularly when you've got examples of countries which are making international news due to repurposing prisons into offices and the entertainment sector due to how little they're being used as, well, prisons)
@Student Samuel Ma Because the FBI is conducting a sum of all crimes of all states. Norway is the size of Florida or North Carolina. its the equivalent of one US state. The comparison is highly dissimilar. You would need to compare the entire EU to the United States to get a fair and accurate comparison.
A very nice over view❤❤I have loved it. I have an exam on rural sociology tomorrow morning, that's exactly why am here listening 😅
Lol victimless crimes list what I call a great weekend
lol
LMFAO
nicole: this has to do with race and ethnicity
comments section: (explodes)
I thought her point was that criminality *didn't* have to do with race or ethnicity. Am I missing something?
Miðgarðsormr Apophis I has to do with economic standpoint in which specific races are born in lower standpoint
@@migarsormrapophis2755 "This" mean how bias and unfair arrest are not criminality
People get pushed into their stereotypes some what
Great video guys!
Could we please get a criminology series?
This is another great episode but it would have been great to see a side-by-side comparison of our approach and Europeans.
Also, regarding the FBI data, its data is collected over a year but how many times might one individual get counted across categories or even within a given category? i.e. commit theft... 3mon sentence... commit theft again.
Lastly, what about individuals that are found innocent in court? Are the FBI numbers for convictions only?
Sorry for all the questions. :p
The comment sections on this series are mostly hellish.
No sociology is science it has predictive models that work like the "poorer the people the more crime they commit on avg." meme comes out of sociology.
David Fischer How is sociology not a science? It uses the scientific method, that is really all you need. Whether the results are always valid is another question, like in any science, they will have to be tested and the methodology and theory questioned. Sociology is just the study of society, what I find is that most people criticing it are not opposed to it in itself, but to all the theories used within it.
Also, science has always been political, eg. climate change and its existance is hige political topic in the USA. Than there are of course regulations informed by the science on the given subject.
Because it often involves a lot of cherry picked statistics that don't conform with reality and BS studies. You also can't just state that racism or the patriarchy exist because you found statistics.
David Fischer
I like your points. There valid and they make sense. But allow me to throw in my two cents here.
How would you define science? I would say it's a subject that we use the scientific method on, right? I mean that's fairly equivocal, but I don't really know any better way to state it. A science is a field of study that employs the scientific method and produces objective results.
I would argue sociology is a science, it's a new science that hasn't quite evolved yet. It hasn't been around long enough for valid methods or tools for gathering information to be discovered. There's a difference between a science and a pseudo-science. Take, for example, Freudian Psychology. It's great and all, but does it have data backing it up? No, not really. Freud was making assumptions based on, well, very little data.
Sociology isn't the same thing. It does have data backing it up, at least in some cases. I'm pretty sure most educated people would agree on the validity of the ingroup-outgroup phenomenon. Sociology just lacks a lot of data and the ways to obtain that data. I think it is (or at least will be) a science, it just need a little more time; you can't make valid claims about astronomy without a telescope (you can but I hope you get my point) in the same way you can't make valid sociological claims without valid methods to obtain that data. And because we're working with people, well that's pretty hard to get.
And think of it this way: sometimes, we can't directly see results. Sometimes we have to interpret what we see in order to reach conclusions. I mean as far as I know, we can't actually see quarks, we just have data that support their existence.
And to be clear, I'm not saying that data always point to causation. Just because a certain group of people is arrested more than others does not mean anyone is treating that group differently, nor does it necessarily mean that those people are acting any differently, but there is a cause somewhere. Most people don't want to accept it as just a coincidence. I hope that IAT tests and other "innovations" will one day help us understand why these things happen, but for now, all we have are educated assumptions (some of which are more educated than others). I don't think it's right to say something like "white is associated with non-criminality" because there isn't much to support that.
That's my two cents. More like three cents; I typed a little too much I hope that's comprehensible and doesn't ruffle any feathers. DFTBA everyone!
Science as something concrete and can be easily tested and doesn't change. There is science on climate change, but we also don't have all of the facts so human bias interjected which is pseudoscience. Statistics on social interaction and individuals is not verifiable and changes over time and from place to place. There may be some validity to "findings" from sociology but it's even less concrete than climate science because individuals aren't as simple as their demographics.
Excellent, nice summary.
There's another reason for incarceration: suppression. Many minority voters tend not to vote Republican, and Republicans are overwhelmingly in favor of 'tough-on-crime' policies, which have the effect of jailing more people. As you've stated above, mass incarceration hits minority peoples the hardest.
Paul Weyrich pointed something out in 1980. He said that Republican political power grows as the voting population goes down. Since 1980, the Republican party has been single-mindedly in favor of these tough-on-crime policies, voter suppression tactics like ID laws, and removing convicted felons' rights to vote. All of which drive down the voting population.
This, combined with simple greed as for-profit prisons have increasingly taken over state facilities, has contributed to the constantly rising prison population despite historically low crime rates.
I can be against voter suppression and not in favor of illegals voting. And, in fact, I am.
Crime is caused by the two primary reasons: (1) poor socioeconomic opportunities and (2) poverty. These are the mother and father of crime.
This was an amazing and thoroughly comprehensive episode! You even unveiled the follies people often make when discussing the problems involving crime rates related to persons. Very impressive.
This was a well thought out and balanced video. Quality work on a tricky subject to approach succinctly.
Good watch. Thanks.
This was great. A heap of info packed in to a short vid. I'd really love to see an Australian version of this with Australian stats. Cheers, (🇦🇺💙❤an aussie criminology student)
And they usually offer a get out of jail at the cost of years of probation plus a charge on your record which will make it very hard to rent or get a job card. Most people take it (guilty or not). Sometimes they don't even give you the deal they promise. And when the judge asks you, "were you promised anything in return for your plea?", boy do they get mad when you tell them you were promised to be released.
"Despite making up 13%..." oh noooo
CAN U GUYS POST THE REFERENCESSSSS????
Cool video!
Hey CrashCourse, can you provide links to your sources?
no, because they are anonymous reports... why won't you ask a TV station for their souces of this nights News... ffs
@bluewing tv as in statistical sources. Those aren’t anonymous, they are just part of data bases 😂
very good video, considering this topic is insanely big and has many areas to discuss. You still raised awareness to a couple of sides which may not be obvious otherwise.
Great vid. Talked about rehabilitation extensively in a debate course. Live in the fiery red south and no one cared but it was still good. Pulled a lot of these same stats!
So i lean generally towards the conservative side , as such i find this Video to be Fair and accurate in it's presentation .. Just saying!
We welcome all to the club of factual information! No need to hold on to political side or associations, glad you’re here
Recidivism numbers are misleading because of how they are calculated. If you calculate it based on people leaving, you end up counting repeat offenders far more than if you calculate it based on everyone who ever goes to prison. Most people who go to prison do not go back to prison (i.e. they only go once). But in a one year time span, if you count everyone who leaves prison in that period, a majority will come back. That is due to repeat offenders being over-represented in leaving and coming back, because the ones that don't come back...don't come back, and therefore are only counted once.
Here's a longer explanation:
www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2015/10/why_do_so_many_prisoners_end_up_back_in_prison_a_new_study_says_maybe_they.html
People quote recidivism numbers because they are shocking. But they don't give an accurate picture of whether prison is a deterrent. It is with some people, and it's not with others. The problem with both cases is that, due to people getting fed up with repeat offenders, our prison sentences are both too long for the people who will not come back anyway even with a short sentence, and too inadequate for repeat offenders, who need far more than a prison sentence to get their life back on track. So we need both shorter sentences (because the diminishing returns on long sentences is staggering), and to devote the saved resources to the repeat offenders who need serious intervention (such as social/cultural skills, drug treatment, job training, and trauma therapy). With these changes we could create a long-term reduction in crime and create a healthier, saner society with far less imprisonment.
i think criminal justice systems should focus on preventing crime instead of punishing it.
Everytime people from social science ask "why" a social situation is just like it is and make a research based on statistics to find out the reason and try to solve it, people appears to take it as a simple "opinion" and not science. Science deniers have come to a whole new level.
the problem i have with this video (one of them at least) is that i thought that it would teach about how the crime is born, not about the social differences between the people arrested. It should have another title like "crime on different clases" or whatever, because that title is misleading about the actual content of the video
This was a brilliant discussion. I would have enjoyed more worldly examples of how other societies besides the U.S. treat and examine criminals (past or present), but focusing on our nation's apparent discrimination towards people of color really intrigued me. It always seems that when America is close to achieving progression as a nation, somehow another group has to be bonded for being the wrong skin tone.
Could you guys post the studies that you get your information from? Thanks.
I don't understand why they didn't talk more about how to prevent crime. Sure they talked a lot about how jail and prison affects people. But they never mentioned what policies reduce crime. Even the part "Are tough on crime policies affective" didn't talk about deterrence for people who haven't committed crimes before.
I ended up in the awesome part of UA-cam again! Gonna stay here now.
Thankyou for this
Good video
Still confused with numbers like 80 billion spent annually on corrections as to how that is not enough money to attempt more rehabilitation programs. If the cost on the nation could be as high as 500 billion for the aggregate burden of incarceration, this seems like there should be even more of an incentive to attempt to use more of the funding for rehabilitation programs. Sadly, some scholars will often use the "not enough funding" as an excuse for failed policies and programs or as a method of getting more funding to waste on such failed policies and programs.
you guys forgot the % of people arrested for victimless crimes... im almost sure that is a lot more people incarcerated because of that, then proprety crimes or against a person... without government who would put such violente no-victim criminals in jail..
you're right actually over half of all people in jail are there for non-violent drug offenses like "possession with intent to sell" or simple "possession of an illicit substances" .
You're bullshitting on almost all levels there are more people in jail/prison for non-violent drug offenses.
IAnCap well you misunderstand the concept that people charged with these "victimless" crimes are also perpetrators of violent and property crimes but weren't caught and/or are part of those stats that 47% of those aren't reported.
It's strange...Criminology is one of those subjects that can't "fix" an issue and so much as provide some ways to try and "improve" the situation. And with good reason, the problems are so insurmountable because of the issues we are facing are arbitrary chaotic, that is; human nature. It's the same pattern but in different shades of colour. I made this quote up in my head a few years ago that goes like " the law is holistic in nature, but individual in application" and as it is, that's too difficult to maintain.
I didn't realize Crash Course had a Legal Studies program.
Can u guys do something about forensics
LOVE YOU SO MUCH !!!!!
thank you
I don't know if you have already addressed some of the leading causes of crime yet, or if you are going to, but that would be cool if you did. Please don't forget to mention how capitalism's false scarcity is the leading cause of most crimes.
What about crimes committed outside the United States? Not all justice systems are the same and in 3rd world countries, corruption messes with the system and often helps the offender more than the victim.
Nicole Sweeney is actually my hero.
Missing the part in which corporations do business putting people in prisons making money, bigger sentences more money for corporations that care for convicts.
What is criminal isn't subjective.
So I'm genuinely curious, how do we know that the majority of arrests don't have less to do with race and more to do with poverty? Or more likely it is a combination? I realize that even minorities in the "upper class" get discriminated against... but I'm just wondering how we know for sure which factors have the biggest impact.
i had to slow her down a little bit so i could take some damn notes...i have her on -0.5 speed .....this is literally exactly the chapter at uni that i've just read
so next time please give us more relative funny breaks. i don't know about anyone else, but crash course is a good learning supplement resource for me because I'm a visual learner and I tend to get distracted. those strategic changes of pace and well placed relative jokes that the history guy utilizes really help. now if thats not you, i understand. its best to keep your own style. however, i'm going to have to hit the pause button or replay button once or twice. don't judge me, learning is not a one pace thing. people like me get stuck when we quit because of what others think. fortunately, I don't care what others think.
I hate what this society has become. I hate the fact that race is such a significant thing. In my opinion, everyone should love and accept and not judge anyone else because then the world would be a much better place! I am friends with people of all kinds of different social classes. I have friends that are lower class, upper class, middle class, it makes no difference to me! I am friends with African Americans, Mexicans, and white Americans. It does not matter to me, because if they are a good person, then I like them. To me it does not matter what is on the outside, to me its all about if they have a good heart.
PLEASE STArt a crash course criminology lolll
OMG. After watching the entire video, most of my previous comment is trivial. (Rigor is not trivial.) As a former prosecutor, I guarantee that this video does not come close to describing the horror of the contemporary criminal justice system. Things are much worse than described here.
A major problem with this video is the framing of the issues. The discussion of the goals of punishment is textbook Anglo-American, and it's wrong. Those four goals are still presented as the goals of the system, but there are emphatically not the true goals.
The presenter accidentally admitted this when she said that reintegration into society is the same as rehabilitation. Those are different goals. Reintegration has never been part of the official goals of US punishment. So, the first framing problem is using the intellectual framework of contemporary Anglo-American jurists even though the intellectual framework is laughably dissimilar from reality.
The second problem is using that framework without understanding what it means. For example, conflating reintegration with rehabilitation.
Third, the entire narrative in this video is exactly the narrative of those who hold the power. This was not a discussion of crime. This was a discussion of crime using the definitions and perspectives of those who benefit from the current system. For a simple and easy to access contrast, look at crime during armed conflict, especially the doctrine of command responsibility. This video about crime is almost completely useless when trying to understand crime during an armed conflict. By discussing crime with the framework of the powerful, the conclusions are predetermined.
If this video is representative of how the majority of contemporary US sociologists perceive, analyze, and describe crime then the majority of contemporary US sociologists are unwitting accomplices in this epidemic of oppression, dehumanization, and pain.
Our species is screwed.
Crime started going down right around when the Cold War ended? I wonder if that's causation, shared cause, or just mere correlation...
Roses are red, Doritos are savory. The modern day prison system is legalized slavery - my favourite shirt. Ever.
Can you make a video on the intersectionality between racial profiling and "benevolent" sexism? Can you analyse the criminal behavior of men and women and demonstrate how this pans out in the legal system, with sentence time, et cetera? I expect that the cultural perception of black men as hypermasculine contributes to their disproportional criminalization. These cycles of Injustice are infuriating.
20 episodes in and we still don't know who the host is... * Nicole Sweeney '
Uh, "the data don't"?
But the video is very interesting! :)
Samuel Engle i noticed that too! lmao
In general I have enjoyed but this series, but this episode seemed to have an underling rhetoric. She seemed to be saying that having more people in prison didn't prevent crime. She gave re-offending statistics as evidence for this. But earlier she said since the 90's reported crime has decreased. Yes she states that COULD be due to lack of reporting said crimes but gave no evidence to support that hypothesis. I think they should aim to be more neutral in the future, All in all though keep up the good work!
There's a lot wrong with US's penal system, punishment seems to amount to "you did something bad (regardless of whether it should actually be considered bad), and so now bad stuff happens to you". It doesn't help anyone, it causes exponentially more problems than it solves. The goal should always be to make "criminals" into productive members of society- but that can't happen, at least not long term, until the reason they committed the crime in the first place is properly addressed. People generally only break rules when it's too inconvenient to follow them- in a "deck stacked against them" kind of way, not a laziness way.
Retribution is the best.
Hey, it's written "plea bargin" in the video
It's Plea Bargain.
Crash Course be having having thing bruh damn
Isn't over-criminalization just another way of saying racial profiling?
yes
Read Foucault.
Name the top 3 sociology textbooks you know of.
Where is the host now?
You overlooked the 'maintaining the validity of the law' approach in your explanation of the purpose of punishment. It makes it look like you are only considering specific prevention theories. Do american law schools not even teach general prevention?
I mean, it's clear that your legal system doesn't follow the theory, but I'm starting to wonder if it's even taught.
The best government governs the least.
sips coffee sits back and waits for someone to mention police brutality
g blake
Wait? Bruh ur 7 months late. Just sesrch for it.
I love crash course, but talk about crime and not talk about Michel Foucault is disappointing :(
I still don’t get why people commit violent crimes
Anybody who wishes to remain in fantasyworld, should NOT look into the social consequences of group differences in cognitive ability.
The might come to a surprise to white folks but I'm a 63 y/o black man who never been in jail. I know what your thinking. "Thats ethnically impossible!"
Michael Walton who's the racist
Michael Walton Not yet LOL
Don't assume people are racist based on race, it's racist
Michael Walton dont hold your breath
GoatSuit thanks for pointing that out my dude
Is there a list of the citations/studies that they use support this overview?
has there been a study on which races tend to be involved more in gangs and gang related activity? From Hells angels to skin heads to siranyo's adn ofcourse crips and bloods.. ??
Women and crime, is not typically male behaviour criminalised more?
Thanks thought bubble
Well, that was appropriately depressing
Long prison sentences say over 5 years are in my opinion counter productive and a waste for both society and the criminal. I think that if it is judged that the person deserves at least 5 years in prison they should be executed instead since they are most likely going to spend the rest of their lives in and out of prison. For those sentenced to prison society needs to take more responsibility in reintegrating them back in, to minimize recidivism and reduce institutionalization. In addition if the criminal has not prepared to re-enter society and are still deemed a threat perhaps at 5 or 7 years of incarceration they should perhaps be executed. If this were the case that society took more responsibility to give criminals the opportunity to change and rejoin society and that if it is determined that the criminal cannot safely rejoin society they are executed it may have the effect of reducing criminal behavior to near zero.
One of the reasons that I think long sentences are detrimental is that it seems to me that those who survive prison almost always need to develop a criminal mentality to survive the experience regardless how criminally minded they were upon entry. After all the way things stand prisons are criminal societies.
Wouldn't it be doesn't instead of don't in "The data don't include".
Nope. Technically, data is plural and countable, so "data don't" or "these data" are correct.
Okay but WHY do people commit crime?
da data dont include
Maim i want to ur no i m also study in criminolog department so i want many information about criminology . U teaching good
Are males overcriminalized? I've read some real horror stories about male victims in abuse getting arrested. Not to mention their Overrepresentation in prisons.
I discourage all comments not looking at this through a logical/scientific lens. And no calling names. Thank you.
I know this was 4 months ago but since you didn't get much of a response, i just wanted to share a point i covered in class. (will link source if i can find it) Men are more likely to commit certain types of crime due to socialisation and they may be those which are likely to lead to a prison sentence, over a community payback or probationary program, so men will make up a higher proportion in that sense. Women are also more likely to have their stories listened to (eg, why they offended against another, mental health plea etc) and taken into account, thereby gaining more lax punishments, more than men (fitting in with societal expectations of rationale behind the actions of their gender) BUT when they commit a seemingly meaningless or 'evil' crime (think child abuse or more disconnected murders) they tend to get much harsher sentences than men with the same charge. Basically, both men and women are treated by the judicial system according to societal gender expectations but when there is deviation from the norm, it seems that is more strongly punished, rather than simply the crime itself.