So here is a modern alternative to prison: If an offender is sentenced to, say, 5 years in prison, they will be offered the choice to either serve their time, or to remain free if they volunteer for the reversible regimen of feminizing chemicals for a time equal to their sentencing. Basically an updated form of probation for more serious crimes. Another option might even be total freedom in exchange for surgical castration.

While this type of option raises the cruel-and-unusual flag for some, the major concern it creates is the exact opposite for me: while it would no doubt prevent future crimes from the castrated person himself, the castration penalty is so non-threatening, so un-cruel compared to prison that it would probably also raise crime in the general population by serving as a “get out of murder free card” for many others. Pre-op transsexuals would basically get a free murder card. And many men, I’m sure, would gladly give up their own testicles for the murder of their choice.

The balance is probably still in favor of the castration option.

Stewart vs. Cramer has got me worried that every “fact” you see presented in the news and the internet is really just self-interested piffle.

Whenever possible, I'm going to try to look at the raw data instead of someone's interpretation of what it means from now on.

If that makes me a cherry-picker too, well…call me Red Fingers.

Isn't that cherry-picking defined?

Yes, he was cherry-picking by using the previous survey that had a very low number for sexual assault. All my complaints about using it stand for him as well.

I didn't say that he wasn't cherry-picking. I said that you two were engaging in it as well. Is it right to cherry-pick because he was?

Lott himself calls out the “low” sexual assault rate in the U.S. as proof America should be locking up even more brown, scary people:

“The International Crime Victimization Survey (ICVS) indicates that for the violent crime categories of sexual assault, robbery and aggravated assault, the U.S. looks remarkably safe. [3] This is even truer for the more serious categories of sexual assault and robbery. Prison is costly, but one could only imagine how much higher American crimes rates would be without it.”

Lott took data from a report that surveyed 10 crimes in 28 countries over 5 years and picked 3 crimes, 8 countries and 1 year to “prove” his point.

I could easily take a different narrow slice of data from the same report Lott used and “prove” exactly the opposite of what he is arguing.

Isn't that cherry-picking defined?

The 2003-2004 survey (table 12) puts the U.S. sexual assault rate at the very top of all countries surveyed, for example.

Of course, as the ICVS report itself notes

“Measuring sexual offences has proven to be difficult because of cultural
differences in what type of behaviour is perceived by female respondents
to constitute an offence.”

and later on page 77

The ICVS measures on sexual violence,
then, need to be interpreted with more than usual caution. An additional
reason to exercise great caution is the recurrent finding that rates of sexual
offences of countries are less stable over the years than those of other
types of crime. This finding may indicate that responses to the question
on sexual incidents are susceptible to events or media campaigns that
may have temporarily raised awareness about this issue.

They also note that there's a particularly low response rate and low rates on these numbers (for sexual assault), and that some results on the raw numbers contradict wider, more detailed studies. (Such as developing countries have relatively more partner abuse than developed countries.)

Also note that the US swung from very low in sexual assault in 1999 to high, whereas Estonia plunged from very very high to low.

The US also has a low pickpocketing rate, especially, to go with the low robbery rate.

Interesting cherry-picking argument, arguing that every low crime rate for the US is random or an artifact, and then focusing on the high ones.

But in any case, the US has long had a history of high violent crimes and of locking people up. None of that means that the two things cause each other.

It is interesting that the US does have a relatively low robbery rate (right now). But with the sexual assault rate the highest, and the assault/threat rate also pretty high, the low robbery rate could just be random or an artifact.