Reading the piece you linked in a sibling thread, I found this:
One of the big tragedies of mass incarceration in the United States is that while high levels of imprisonment are clearly a political and mechanical response to high levels of crime, they are not a very effective response. The basic reason is that soaring prison headcounts are mostly driven by long prison sentences, but the deterrent effect of prison is much more driven by the odds of getting caught. In other words, an 80% chance of needing to serve a two-year sentence and a 20% chance of needing to serve an eight-year sentence have the same expected value. But the former is much more deterring. And since it deters more effectively, it will lead to fewer crimes being committed and less incarceration. And that’s what we actually need — less crime, not harsher punishment for the minority of criminals who get caught.
Perhaps some "law & order" types believe that every crime should be punished by life in prison, but that isn't what other human societies do and they mostly have less crime than we have. Many of them focus on rehabilitation rather than punishment, leading to vastly lower recidivism. High recidivism is one of the techniques we use to maximize incarceration, and as Yglesias describes at your link astonishingly long sentences are another. The phenomena reinforce each other: a 17yo who spends 12 years in prison for robbery will generally not get a high-paying job at age 29.
Those who watch a great deal of CNN "headline news" and 11 PM local news might reject these observations, but those people are living in a nightmare false reality driven by the well-known "if it bleeds it leads" rule. Stop watching those evil TV shows! USA imprisons 65 out of 10,000 people. No other nation comes close. No other nation has come close in history. (That includes USA in previous eras.) We have vastly higher crime rates than other developed nations because our "justice" system is so extreme. The system is more effective at destroying lives than at preventing crime. If one carefully considers that proposition, it will be apparent that many of those destroyed lives are actually innocent of the "crimes" of which they have been convicted.
Don't "imagine" alternatives. Instead, examine what others do. Also, read that link you posted.
> We have vastly higher crime rates than other developed nations because our "justice" system is so extreme. The system is more effective at destroying lives than at preventing crime. If one carefully considers that proposition, it will be apparent that many of those destroyed lives are actually innocent of the "crimes" of which they have been convicted.
This is actually an extraordinary claim that requires evidence. It can’t be stated as flatly true. But I have no problem acknowledging that our system is particularly cruel. Prisons should be safe, clean, humane, comfortable...but not empty. The reality is that there’s a lot of violence in this country and its causes are complex and inscrutable. “We have a lot of crime because we lock so many people up” is unconvincing.
One of the big tragedies of mass incarceration in the United States is that while high levels of imprisonment are clearly a political and mechanical response to high levels of crime, they are not a very effective response. The basic reason is that soaring prison headcounts are mostly driven by long prison sentences, but the deterrent effect of prison is much more driven by the odds of getting caught. In other words, an 80% chance of needing to serve a two-year sentence and a 20% chance of needing to serve an eight-year sentence have the same expected value. But the former is much more deterring. And since it deters more effectively, it will lead to fewer crimes being committed and less incarceration. And that’s what we actually need — less crime, not harsher punishment for the minority of criminals who get caught.
Perhaps some "law & order" types believe that every crime should be punished by life in prison, but that isn't what other human societies do and they mostly have less crime than we have. Many of them focus on rehabilitation rather than punishment, leading to vastly lower recidivism. High recidivism is one of the techniques we use to maximize incarceration, and as Yglesias describes at your link astonishingly long sentences are another. The phenomena reinforce each other: a 17yo who spends 12 years in prison for robbery will generally not get a high-paying job at age 29.
Those who watch a great deal of CNN "headline news" and 11 PM local news might reject these observations, but those people are living in a nightmare false reality driven by the well-known "if it bleeds it leads" rule. Stop watching those evil TV shows! USA imprisons 65 out of 10,000 people. No other nation comes close. No other nation has come close in history. (That includes USA in previous eras.) We have vastly higher crime rates than other developed nations because our "justice" system is so extreme. The system is more effective at destroying lives than at preventing crime. If one carefully considers that proposition, it will be apparent that many of those destroyed lives are actually innocent of the "crimes" of which they have been convicted.
Don't "imagine" alternatives. Instead, examine what others do. Also, read that link you posted.