Comment by morgante
3 years ago
> If locking large numbers of people up for inordinately long times prevented crime, the United States would be the safest place in the world.
Comparing between countries with massively different demographics is pointless. The US simply has far more criminality than other wealthy nations.
> We've tried highly punitive mass incarceration for decades and it's failing horribly.
That's not my take-away. We had a massive and growing crime problem in the US in the 60s and 70s and pursued a policy of mass incarceration as a solution.
It worked. Crime went down a lot since we started mass incarceration.
Over the last decade, and particularly since 2020, we've been reversing that policy and seeing the impact: spiking violent crime and unsafe cities.
I don't know how you can possibly look at this and think it "doesn't work." I'm sure criminals prefer a policy of catch and release, but I'd rather bring back mass incarceration.
>Comparing between countries with massively different demographics is pointless. The US simply has far more criminality than other wealthy nations.
Yes, that is exactly related to the point OP was trying to make? Where does this crime come from? Maybe instead of useless, if not counter-productive mass incarceration, we should focus on rehabilitation and more importantly improving social injustices that are the causes of the higher crime rate sin the US.