Is America Like Libya or Egypt?

In my internet circles I have read complaints about the claims of some Occupy protesters that this movement is inspired or bears a relationship with the Arab Spring. The complaint is that it is absurd to compare the difficulties facing the American people with those faced by the citizens of Egypt or Libya.

For most Americans, such a comparison is definitely weird. Most Americans are not deprived of free speech, political organizing, and voting rights via a 30-year long state of emergency declaration, as Egypt's people were. Most Americans also don't have to worry about ending up in a secret prison without trial, as 5000 - 10000 of Egypt's people were in the year before the revolution.

But most Americans is not the same as all Americans! Invoking the injustices of Egypt and Libya, whatever its flaws as good messaging, can only be called a crazy idea if you forget that America contains lots of people, and not all of them are white twenty year-olds.

For some more comparisons,

The population of Libya is 6.5 million.

The prison population of the United States is 2.3 million, with an additional 4.9 million on parole or probation, and an additional 40 million out of the justice system but still holding criminal records that prevent employment for which they would otherwise be eligible, or limit their access to government assistance, or legally forbid them from voting in many states*. The United States has something like two Libyas-worth of disenfranchised citizens who will never break out of poverty.

Back to the original 2.3 million actually in jail:

905,000 are black.
475,000 are Hispanic.

500,000 are awaiting trial at any given moment. The United States has a rolling population of .5 million untried prisoners at all times.

Out of the 1.5 million in state and federal prison, 12ish percent, 180,000 people, are there for pot. The percentage within local jails and the parole/probation population is harder to find out.


Of course, this isn't largely what the white kids in the 99% are protesting. They're protesting inequality. Clearly America's inequality problem should never be compared to Egypt or Libya.

(One more tidbit: The population of Egypt, 80 million, is 43% urban. Of all Egyptians, 30% enroll in some amount of post-secondary education, 15% graduate. 2/3rds of the population of Egypt is under 30. The median age of Egypt is 24.)



*All states except Maine and Vermont take away voting rights upon felony conviction. 2,000,000 Americans who have completed applicable prison and parole sentences are ineligible to vote due to prior convictions. Millions more fail to re-register to vote after becoming eligible due to confusion over their state's re-registration laws.
-Source for prison population statistics: Wikipedia
-Source for post-prison and disenfranchisement statistics: ACLU: Voting With A Criminal Record - Executive Summary

And reflections on Ethel Jones and gun ownership

So, riffing off the Ethel Jones story below, as someone who doesn't feel strongly about the rights or culture issues attached to gun ownership, what I find interesting in the safety and crime issue is how hard it is to attribute the presence or absence of a firearm to overall improved social results. Here's the AP blurb again (not for the Nellie photo on the left):

"Sixty nine year-old Ethel Jones poses with her .38 caliber snubnose revolver behind the glass door window she shattered when she fired three shots at a burglar who broke into her Decatur, Alabama home Monday, August 30, 2010. An 18-year-old suspect was taken to Huntsville Hospital with a gunshot wound to the abdomen."

So in this case, Ethel Jones is out a window, but lots of things can break windows. Zooming out, the hospital has to put an 18 year old man's stomach back together, and somebody has to pay for that -- can the hospital do that for less cost than the items a single burglar can carry out of a house on their person? That really depends on whether he found her jewelery case.

And now he is to be entered into the criminal justice system. In the case of burglary, applying justice via legal framework may prevent greater ills that would have come from this man later, or maybe he just wanted a couple dvds to hawk, and now his life is very likely non-valuable (i.e. fucked up), and there are no refunds on the social inputs that go into a life. Whether catching a robber in action is really better for society is a crapshoot.

Zooming out further, the counter argument is that without a framework for occasional, inefficiently over-sized punishment falling on individuals who are caught, profoundly more people would commit the crime in question. I don't think that's true, social motivations don't seem to be affected by the deterrent threat of remotely possible punishment that way -- lots of people die in car wrecks but that doesn't decrease the amount of driving that people chose to do much. But it's a valid argument nonetheless, it's an argument that can be made. The point is that it is really just left to opinion, the complexity of factors which go into actually determining as fact whether firearm possession leads to more good or more bad social outcomes is staggering.

I'm not trying to suggest that Ethel should have to have her stuff taken just because there are costs to protecting it. But on the other hand, stealing isn't the same as destruction. Somebody would still have that stuff, and at a reduced price than what they would pay at Target. Imagine then if the social response to robbery was for the neighborhood, town, whatever, to just say, "Aw shit, here's some replacement stuff or gift certificates Ethel".

Broadly speaking, I don't feel safe around civilians who have a gun, but I don't feel profoundly safe around police who have guns either. I do not think possessing a gun makes a person less likely to die by being shot by a gun. I do not think trying to suppress gun ownership can be done without huge problems and costs, but on the other hands there are probably some pretty low-cost ways to discourage gun ownership and criminal use. For example, why do police need to carry guns? What would happen if regular police didn't, instead only SWAT squads or the like? If all beat police were known not to have guns, would any criminal really ever shoot at a police officer, knowing he could just run away instead? Maybe. Ethel shot at somebody she could have just threatened away.