this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2024
153 points (100.0% liked)

Data Is Beautiful

160 readers
1 users here now

A place to share and discuss data visualizations. #dataviz

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
top 36 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] fahfahfahfah@lemmy.billiam.net 41 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Do we have a dataishorrible community?

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 11 points 5 months ago

The thumbnail screenshot doesn’t do it justice. Or maybe you meant USisHorrible.

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 9 points 5 months ago

Haha we need one.

[–] No1@aussie.zone 39 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Guys, guys!

You're ignoring the real questions!

Are the companies running the prisons profitable and how much should you invest?!!????

[–] kindenough@kbin.earth 22 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It is always depressing to read people all of a sudden worried about other countries like China or Russia, don't even giving a minuscule fuck about what is happening in their own country.

[–] coolusername@lemmy.ml 6 points 5 months ago

ok, VLAD
or +999999 social credit points /s (btw social credit isn't a real thing) https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/09/15/china-social-credit-system-authoritarian/

[–] NovaPrime@lemmy.ml 16 points 5 months ago

Its been a few years since I checked, but as of 2015 at least the US, which is 5% of the world's population, give or take a few, had over 25% of the world's prison population. Total. Fucking. Insanity

[–] lazynooblet@lazysoci.al 10 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Is that really 1% of the population incarcerated? Wow

[–] Schmoo@slrpnk.net 9 points 5 months ago

Why can't my state be near the top of a good list for once.

[–] istanbullu@lemmy.ml 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

America has more prisoners than China.

[–] el_abuelo@programming.dev 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] linkhidalgogato@lemmy.ml 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

exactly the real numbers for amerikkka are way higher when u take into account all the cia and military prisons across the world that we know next to nothing about.

[–] alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml 7 points 5 months ago

It's absolutely projection that other countries must be lying about their prison populations, when we know for a fact that we are, eg ICE only counts migrants who are directly moved to a long-term facility, if they're moved to a temporary facility first, they are excluded entirely.

I kinda doubt they're even including the immigrant concentration camps in those stats

[–] Fidel_Cashflow@lemmy.ml 9 points 5 months ago

land of the free, baby!! 🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲

[–] The_Che_Banana 5 points 5 months ago

No surprise at the top 10 states.

[–] coolusername@lemmy.ml 3 points 5 months ago

are you the github dessalines??

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)
[–] warm@kbin.earth 21 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Bringing out the whataboutism for a country that doesn't even exist anymore?

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 10 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Ha, that is fair. I was just poking fun at dessalines's habit of giving a free pass to any country that is openly mauling and torturing its citizens as long as they wear the right color hat. But yes, it is fully accurate that the US's prison system is an authoritarian nightmare that preys on its minority population without rest or mercy. And, comparing the US against countries which don't even make the claim of being "democratic" and finding it competitive with the worst of the open tyrannies is maybe fair.

Also, I just looked, and I don't think these numbers are accurate. I think they're straight-up ignoring some countries with millions of people, and I think the numbers are about 8 years out of date. The US incarceration rate has been falling back down to merely horrifying levels after the Stalinist peak it rose to after Reagan+Clinton teamed up to ruin the world.

US Incarceration Rate

List of Countries by Incarceration Rate

The majority of states in our land of wonderful freedoms are newly competitive with such beacons of hope as El Salvador, Rwanda, and Turkmenistan. The march of progress!

[–] warm@kbin.earth 4 points 5 months ago

Yeah I also looked on Wikipedia, which uses World Prison Brief data. The WPB is from 2023 and the Prison Policy data is from 2021, so maybe things changed, but I can't find the WPB data for 2021 and nor do I want to spend anymore time looking :D

[–] mihnt@lemmy.ca 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

The Gulag at the peak housed about ~~7,500~~ (edit: 1,340) per 100k of the Soviet population.

(And yes, the US's 531 is still also an atrocity.)

Where did you get 329? I actually couldn't find any post-Kruschev numbers, but I know after privatization, Russia was pretty competitive with the US's dystopian nightmare.

Edit: I was way wrong about the size of the Gulag

[–] Edie@lemmy.ml 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

No where did you get 7500??? Holy shit, that would be nearly 10 million people. (assuming somewhere around 160 million total pop)

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yeah. I'm taking the high side of the widely varying estimates of the Gulag population, which in the period of the 1940s range from 3.5 million to 17.6 million depending on who's doing the estimating.

[–] Objection@lemmy.ml 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

So, looking for the wildest claims from the middle of the cold war and trying to pass them off as fact?

If you look at the estimates the article actually uses:

By the end of 1940, the population of the Gulag camps amounted to 1.5 million.[13]

According to some estimates, the total population of the camps varied from 510,307 in 1934 to 1,727,970 in 1953.[4] According to other estimates, at the beginning of 1953 the total number of prisoners in prison camps was more than 2.4 million of which more than 465,000 were political prisoners.[22][23] Between the years 1934 to 1953, 20% to 40% of the Gulag population in each given year were released.[24][25]

Your number is several times higher than the highest estimate used outside of the historiography section (in case anyone reading is unfamiliar with the term, historiography is the study of how our understanding of history has changed over time, and so includes references to claims that have now been widely discredited).

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Yeah, you’re right. It looks like there’s a consensus now that the population in the Gulag was way lower than I thought. Fair play. There’s also a chart year by year, in the “history” section, which I missed.

If it was 2.4 million in 1953, out of total population of 179 million, that’s 1,340 in detention per 100k. The modern US is only 40% as bad as the literal Gulag at its peak. Fuckin hooray.

[–] mihnt@lemmy.ca 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Ah, got it. I was talking about USSR, not modern Russia. Modern Russia is its own thing and its own brand of horror but not the same as OG Communist USSR which was more what I was trying to highlight.

[–] mihnt@lemmy.ca 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I doubt anything that came out of the USSR will be entirely accurate anyways.

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 2 points 5 months ago

Yeah; that’s probably why there is such a lack of data. The period for which there are estimates vary by a factor of 20 between low and high estimates. 🙁

[–] geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)
[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Why isn't California on the list? I must have missed it, right? But I looked three times.

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 4 points 5 months ago

It's right below turkmenistan, in the link.

[–] kogasa@programming.dev 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

No other country even makes the first page

If every state in America were only 1% worse than every other country, then again the first 50 entries would be the American states. This is barely saying more than "America has the highest incarceration rate," so it shouldn't be a surprise.

[–] UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 1 points 5 months ago

Half of Michigan wants to commit crimes against the other half, but they are fortunately separated by some really great lakes.

[–] lorgo_numputz 1 points 5 months ago

Why don't I see California?