This argument doesn't make any sense. What would be the reason for seeing more repeat offenders other than sending more people to jail in the first place? The s

This argument doesn't make any sense. What would be the reason for seeing more repeat offenders other than sending more people to jail in the first place? The statistic they're observing is a RESULT of prison growth, not the cause. Obviously they correlate, but without the incarceration rate going up first, this simply doesn't make any sense - the average # of prior offenses can't increase unless the rate of conviction increases first (and must lag by the average recidivism time), so average # of prior offenses is clearly not a leading cause. In any case, you can easily see that the incarceration rate grew at a pace far in excess of the crime rates: http://www.usprisonculture.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/incarceration-vs-violent-crime-rate.jpg http://www.usprisonculture.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/... The whole idea that the two are related in any way, including this one, is verkakte.