That doesn't make it wrong. There is a reason the public started to support stiffer sentences, after all - they believed (correctly, as it turns out) locking up criminals means you get less crime.
Except that crime rates dropped the same way in just about every other western country without harsher sentencing, and without locking up large sections of the population.
Nice catch. I didn't read carefully enough. 'Western world' being a key phrase. I got my stat from this statement "New Zealand has the second highest rate of imprisonment in the Western world.[12]" from here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Corrections_(New_...
Even so, mpwieher's comment still stands to some degree. At a rate of 190, NZ is still around the same level as other Western countries which range from 70 to 150ish. It's nowhere near the proportion of people imprisoned by the US at 730. That's a pretty big dropoff between first and second place.
So... your reasoning is... that a skyrocketing prison population does indeed reduce crime significantly... and at the same time, gun laws in the US were mostly responsible for the reduction in crime drop?
I mean, you're agreeing with me at the same time you're disagreeing with me, in a way that just doesn't make sense.
