And then there’re people who commit robbery and serve time. Then not long after release they commit worse crime like murder, which could’ve been prevented if they’re still in jail. It’s not that simple man. Sure people can become better, or they stay the same, or they get even worse.
This is a form of argument that I call "Proof by horror story". It is a logical fallacy, a specific instance of a broader category of logical fallacies called faulty generalization [1]. To debunk it we only need to observe that just about any behavior can be predictive of committing a serious crime if you are willing to ignore false positives. But I'm not willing to ignore them. I think it's worse to incarcerate an innocent person than to let a guilty one go free.
If you're willing to imprison a thief for life because there is a chance they might go on to commit murder, why not imprison their family as well? After all, they might have the same bad genes as the thief. For that matter, why not keep everyone in solitary confinement? That guarantees that no one will be free to commit murder.
People's behaviors are unpredictable. Having some people occasionally go rogue is just the price we sometimes have to pay to live in a free society. If you don't like it you might want to consider emigrating to North Korea. Very few guilty people go free there.
An individual's behavior is unpredictable, but in groups it's pretty predictable.
Recidivism is a major issue and there are ways to address it, but they have to actually be worked on (and they will admittedly fail at times, people have to accept that).
Many (most?) of the jail-to-good-citizen pathways have been closed down or restricted over the years.
