By debating "tough" vs "soft" on crime you're already buying into their framing of the issue. "Tough on crime" in America is code for "feed people into the pris

By debating "tough" vs "soft" on crime you're already buying into their framing of the issue. "Tough on crime" in America is code for "feed people into the prison industrial complex for life for low-level crimes" thanks to things like Biden's "three strikes" policy. It's also rooted in racism, as typically the people the system is "tough" on are people of color. To give but one example of the difference in mindset: Portugal has had great success by decriminalizing drugs and treating addiction as a mental health issue, whereas America prefers to throw people in a cage and ruin their lives because "drugs are bad". That's part of what America means by being "tough" on crime: lack empathy, don't look at individual circumstances, and treat mental health issues as crimes to keep feeding a for-profit prison industry and ever-increasing police power. Edit: I wonder if the downvotes are partisan over my mention of Biden’s role in our current state of affairs. Just trying to help explain America’s peculiar pathology that led us to the shameful statistic of having the highest incarceration rate in the world.