They are, and I agree it’s misleading. It’s implying that it’s somehow shocking that the individual states of the county with the highest incarceration rate in the world also have a high incarceration rate. If it was absolute numbers, it would maybe make a point. As it is, it’s stating the extremely obvious and framing it as “look, it’s even worse than you thought”.
It shows which US states contribute more to the US incarceration rate and clearly shows that even those that contribute the least are above the majority of the nations’ incarceration rates. The latter is not obvious without visualizing the data in this way.
If it was absolute numbers, it would maybe make a point.
If you have a population with 10M people and 20,000 of them are prisoners, that’s significantly less concerning than a country with 100,000 people of which 10,000 are prisoners. You can’t make an apples-to-apples comparison between Texas and Wyoming with raw head-count.
it’s somehow shocking that the individual states of the county with the highest incarceration rate in the world also have a high incarceration rate
It’s shocking that the state of Louisiana has a full 2% of its population in jail. That’s twice the US national baseline.
Yes, but that is not how the graph is framed. It’s framed as “look, if we put US states on a graph with other countries, they have such a high incarceration rate that there are almost no countries even on the graph!”
If it was honest and just trying to compare the incarceration rate of US states amongst each other (and the national average) it wouldn’t be titled “[…] in U.S. states and all countries […]”. It’s a clearly manipulative title.
The reason that a graph with this title could maybe make a point if it was absolute numbers is that most U.S. states’ population is less than most countries, so if individual states were still high on such a graph, that would be shocking.
It’s framed as “look, if we put US states on a graph with other countries, they have such a high incarceration rate that there are almost no countries even on the graph!”
It’s certainly possible that you have one big state with a high incarceration rate - Texas or California for instance - that’s throwing off the national average. States are free to set their own penal process. It’s not a given that every state has a globe-shattering incarceration rate.
Saying “It’s not just one or two states with astronomical incarceration rates, its the whole country contributing to the total” indicates something notable about the politics and culture of the country as a whole.
Wyoming could have an incarceration rate of 0% without affecting America’s position as a carceral state. That it doesn’t is meaningful.
Yes, but that doesn’t make the comparison to all countries with over 500 000 people meaningful. It’s specifically that part that seems dishonest to me.
Though I suppose it is also possible that the full data has a few states where incarceration rates are more around the global average, which then would actually have a point in including other countries. Those weren’t part of the image posted here though (which was also dropped without context as to why it was posted)
Edit: yknow it occured to me i could click the link and yea, some states are indeed more normal, though still kinda high. That’s really the interesting part far more than the top of the list.
They are, and I agree it’s misleading. It’s implying that it’s somehow shocking that the individual states of the county with the highest incarceration rate in the world also have a high incarceration rate. If it was absolute numbers, it would maybe make a point. As it is, it’s stating the extremely obvious and framing it as “look, it’s even worse than you thought”.
It shows which US states contribute more to the US incarceration rate and clearly shows that even those that contribute the least are above the majority of the nations’ incarceration rates. The latter is not obvious without visualizing the data in this way.
If you have a population with 10M people and 20,000 of them are prisoners, that’s significantly less concerning than a country with 100,000 people of which 10,000 are prisoners. You can’t make an apples-to-apples comparison between Texas and Wyoming with raw head-count.
It’s shocking that the state of Louisiana has a full 2% of its population in jail. That’s twice the US national baseline.
Yes, but that is not how the graph is framed. It’s framed as “look, if we put US states on a graph with other countries, they have such a high incarceration rate that there are almost no countries even on the graph!”
If it was honest and just trying to compare the incarceration rate of US states amongst each other (and the national average) it wouldn’t be titled “[…] in U.S. states and all countries […]”. It’s a clearly manipulative title.
The reason that a graph with this title could maybe make a point if it was absolute numbers is that most U.S. states’ population is less than most countries, so if individual states were still high on such a graph, that would be shocking.
It’s certainly possible that you have one big state with a high incarceration rate - Texas or California for instance - that’s throwing off the national average. States are free to set their own penal process. It’s not a given that every state has a globe-shattering incarceration rate.
Saying “It’s not just one or two states with astronomical incarceration rates, its the whole country contributing to the total” indicates something notable about the politics and culture of the country as a whole.
Wyoming could have an incarceration rate of 0% without affecting America’s position as a carceral state. That it doesn’t is meaningful.
Yes, but that doesn’t make the comparison to all countries with over 500 000 people meaningful. It’s specifically that part that seems dishonest to me.
Though I suppose it is also possible that the full data has a few states where incarceration rates are more around the global average, which then would actually have a point in including other countries. Those weren’t part of the image posted here though (which was also dropped without context as to why it was posted)
Edit: yknow it occured to me i could click the link and yea, some states are indeed more normal, though still kinda high. That’s really the interesting part far more than the top of the list.
Fair enough. Any state with less than 500k people probably shouldn’t be on the list.
Wait… isn’t ~1,000 per 100,000 much closer to 1% than 2%?
It’s still mind boggling, not trying to minimize it.
Thank you that’s what I meant, I just couldn’t put it into words properly.