Societal offenders in prison

This study examines the relationship between a country’s human development index (HDI) and the number of societal offenders in jail (Off Index) for the country. Traditional analysis of this nature strongly veers towards linear (regression) analysis which may be inappropriate for the present case because of the high variabilities viz. fractality, of the data for the number of offenders in jails. Results revealed that: (1) the one-dimensional plot reflects the variability of human development indices throughout the world; (2) the one-dimensional plot of offenders’ index is far more fragmented than the HDI with a fractal dimension of 1.5795 reflecting a smoothness deviation of close to 60% (57.95%); (3) the two-dimensional plot reflects the impact of the variability of HDIs to the roughness of the number of incarcerated offenders; and (4) it follows that the key to minimizing the occurrence of deviant social behavior is the development of human potentials as reflected in the various dimensions of the human development index. The fractal correlation coefficient (fractogram) and the correlation of the fractal dimensions in tandem give a clearer picture of the degree of relationship induced by one highly variant variable on another variable than using the ordinary correlation coefficient. This is illustrated in the case of the relationship between the human development index and the number of incarcerated offenders in the various countries in the world