President Obama said in his State of the Union address:
Surely we can agree it's a good thing that for the first time in 40 years, the crime rate and the incarceration rate have come down together, and use that as a starting point for Democrats and Republicans, community leaders and law enforcement, to reform America's criminal justice system so that it protects and serves us all.
Only one problem: If the President is talking about 2013, which he certainly seems to be (as 2014 statistics on crime and incarceration rates are not yet available), his point is misleading. The crime rate did indeed fall in 2013 (for the first time in three years), but incarceration increased. As Obama's own Justice Department reported four months ago:
- U.S. state and federal correctional facilities held an estimated 1,574,700 prisoners on December 31, 2013, an increase of 4,300 prisoners from year end 2012.
- The 3-year decline in the prison population stopped in 2013 due to an increase of 6,300 inmates (0.5%) in the state prison population.
- The federal prison population decreased in size for the first time since 1980, with 1,900 fewer prisoners in 2013 than in 2012.
- The number of prisoners sentenced to more than a year in state or federal prison increased by 5,400 persons from year end 2012 to year end 2013.
- The number of persons admitted to state or federal prison during 2013 increased by 4%, from 608,400 in 2012 to 631,200 in 2013.
The president said "incarceration rate," not "incarceration." There is a difference, and what he said is true. The Fact Checker agrees: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2015/01/22/what-obama-didnt-say-about-crime-and-incarceration/
It's true that there's a difference between "incarceration rate" and "incarceration." What you're missing is that there's also a difference between "misleading" (which was my characterization of the President's remark) and "false" (the word I intentionally avoided using for the reasons you state).
I have no changes to make from my statement. The President wanted to lead us to believe that we can start emptying the prisons and still reduce crime. That is one of Eric Holder's main talking points (and I'm sure that part of the speech originated at DOJ).
But it is, as I said, misleading. Imprisonment DOES help reduce crime. No serious person disputes that point, although they do argue about HOW MUCH imprisonment contributes to the reduction.
President Obama is a past master at saying things that are true in haec verba but misleading in intent and effect. He of course is far from the only politician of whom this is true, cf. "It depends on what 'is' is." But that's what he was doing, and I stand by my post in full. I would note that the very Washington Post piece you cite says much the same thing, giving the President "One Pinocchio for missing context."
It shouldn't be surprising that a politician would use the metric that most supports his arguments. Even so, rates are definitely a better metric than raw numbers. (We wouldn't talk about 1970s-era spending without adjusting for inflation.)
I agree it's not surprising that a politician would use the metric that most supports his arguments. It's also not surprising that his critics would call him on it when he does, and point out, as the Post and I did, that some informative data got left on the editing room floor.
Both rates and bulk numbers are important to a full understanding of what's going on. Thus, it would misleading for the police chief of a small town to claim that "the crime rate over the last year has been cut in half" -- how impressive! -- without noting that the number of crimes had fallen from four to two, for a grand total of two fewer crimes. That puts the whole thing in a different light.