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The US over-reliance on incarceration is lazy and cruel

obviatethestate.substack.com

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Re: The US over-reliance on incarceration is lazy and cruel

#21

Post by andyjohnson0 »

anonporridge wrote: post #2

Like all high morality, more advanced rehabilitation methods and/or more pleasant segregation of criminals from law abiding members of society, is a privilege of wealth. The richer we collectively are, the more resources we can devote to managing counterproductive individuals more humanely. The poorer we are, the more likely we have to resort to more barbaric methods of order maintenance, like execution. Therefore, i…

The US already has more than enough wealth - but it needs to deploy it more responsibly. "Wealth first, morality later" is at best a lazy abdication of moral responsibility, and at worst a deliberate misdirection to maintain the personal advantage of a small part of US society.

Re: The US over-reliance on incarceration is lazy and cruel

#22

Post by w______roy »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #7
slt2021 wrote: post #3

typical champagne socialist post. just look at Oakland and see if lax on crime policies work.

Penalty length has very little effect on crime motivation. The most important factor is the likelihood of getting caught. You want to see crime rates drop? Shift a large percentage of the prison budget to the police.

It's not "likelihood of getting caught" because even if you have a 1 in 5 shot at getting away with a crime, desperate folks (or folks with a shaky understanding of probability) will still take the risk. It has to be "certainty of getting caught" which requires more than just more police, but also public messaging, education, etc. See: https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/247350.pdf

Re: The US over-reliance on incarceration is lazy and cruel

#23

Post by henryreynolds »

tqi wrote: post #13

> Mr. Cassidy could face $250,000 worth of penalty (excluding fines) for $1,500 worth of crime. To state that the reason the maximum is 5 years is because the item was religious in nature, then ignore that fact when calculating the cost of the offense tells me this person is starting from a conclusion and working backwards. By this methodology, conspiracy to commit murder should get no jail time since the "cost" is $…

You're absolutely right that the sum harm inflicted is greater than the cost to repair the altar. There's a certain point where trying to calculate ephemerals loses the thread.

For the inconvenience, missed opportunity, and emotional damage, I'd look to tort law. The entire matter could be resolved through civil suit without incarceration, and I'd rather see the victim whole than the criminal suffer.

Re: The US over-reliance on incarceration is lazy and cruel

#24

Post by kjkjadksj »

I saw the police cuff someone who was walking on the shoulder of the highway. They probably went to jail for the night and were released before long to continue walking out of their mind into roadways until something tragic puts a stop to that. The cruelty of the process comes from how procedural it is. No one kicked this person back into certain harm directly, but thats basically what the procedural implementation we have amounted to, and sadly there is no mechanism built in that would have lead to this person getting the help they need instead of being put right back into the same harm they were in previously.

Re: The US over-reliance on incarceration is lazy and cruel

#25

Post by zabzonk »

narrator wrote: post #4

Over-reliance on prison seems to have worked astonishingly well for El Salvador. If your metric is murder rates then it's probably a world record in terms of change in murder rate from the highest in the world (106 per 100k in 2015) to one of the lowest (2.4 per 100k in 2023).

link?

Re: The US over-reliance on incarceration is lazy and cruel

#26

Post by renewiltord »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #7
slt2021 wrote: post #3

typical champagne socialist post. just look at Oakland and see if lax on crime policies work.

Penalty length has very little effect on crime motivation. The most important factor is the likelihood of getting caught. You want to see crime rates drop? Shift a large percentage of the prison budget to the police.

I think if you take a guy making $200k and offer to pay him $1m for the same job, you’ll find that he’ll often accept.

Re: The US over-reliance on incarceration is lazy and cruel

#27

Post by lolyyy2 »

"Would deterrence justify the maximum sentence? Not hardly." You can't just hand-wave things like that by saying "Not hardly." The counterexample is very clear when the author mentions China as a place with a smaller prisoner population. Deterrence is very effective in China...

And, just because the religious altar cost $X to physically replace doesn't mean desecration only caused $X of damage. The reduction of the act of desecration of a symbol people care deeply about to just the replacement cost is absurd.

Re: The US over-reliance on incarceration is lazy and cruel

#28

Post by wongarsu »

anonporridge wrote: post #2

Like all high morality, more advanced rehabilitation methods and/or more pleasant segregation of criminals from law abiding members of society, is a privilege of wealth. The richer we collectively are, the more resources we can devote to managing counterproductive individuals more humanely. The poorer we are, the more likely we have to resort to more barbaric methods of order maintenance, like execution. Therefore, i…

The US has the 8th highest GPD per capita in the world (PPP, place 7 if you use nominal numbers). About the same as Denmark, yet the US has nearly ten times as many prisoners per capita.

Clearly there are more differences between Denmark and the US. But I don't think that only countries wealthier than the US (the likes of Quatar, the UAE or Luxembourg) can afford to handle crime in a more humane way.

Re: The US over-reliance on incarceration is lazy and cruel

#29

Post by kelseyfrog »

anonporridge wrote: post #2

Like all high morality, more advanced rehabilitation methods and/or more pleasant segregation of criminals from law abiding members of society, is a privilege of wealth. The richer we collectively are, the more resources we can devote to managing counterproductive individuals more humanely. The poorer we are, the more likely we have to resort to more barbaric methods of order maintenance, like execution. Therefore, i…

Not untrue, but it's important to also point out the prison labor system as an economic factor that incentivizes maintaining or expanding itself. Independent from our collective riches, if the marginal return on leveraging prison labor is greater than that of non-prison labor, then the finance argument makes itself.

The reason that it's important to point this out, is that prison labor is an element of growing civilizational real wealth and this nuance is important.

Re: The US over-reliance on incarceration is lazy and cruel

#30

Post by w______roy »

dcist wrote: post #20

We have an under-incarceration problem. See the recent results from El Salvador. I don't lose a second of sleep over the cruel treatment of murderers and violent criminals.

Only ~47% of incarcerated people in US prisons and jails are in for violent crime.
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