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What would you propose we do with people who commit violent crimes and who are likely to commit them again?
by ishjoh 5y ago
What would you propose we do with people who commit violent crimes and who are likely to commit them again?
- InitialLastName 5y agoIf any sort of majority of our prison population had committed violent crimes, and we had no evidence of other ways to handle people than enslaving them, you might have a point. As it is, using prison populations to provide lower-cost-than-otherwise-legal labor for private corporations creates a huge mountain of perverse incentives.
- ryan93 5y agoThe vast majority of people in prison could have trivially avoided being there.
- t-3 5y agoYeah, they could have just chosen to be born white or rich! /s
- ryan93 5y agoMurder is understandable if you're black and or poor. /s
- jamincan 5y agoHow many people in the US prison population committed violent crimes?
- ryan93 5y agoA substantial fraction. people way overestimate how much of it is just drugs. Of course most violent crimes like domestic abuse and rape dont lead to prison sentences
- dionidium 5y agoA lot. Source: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html If you look specifically at people serving at least 1 year in a state prison (which is where most of the convicted prisoners are, as the link above shows), then it's a majority: "However, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that, as of the end of 2015, 54% of state prisoners sentenced to more than 1 year were serving time for a violent offense. 15 percent of state prisoners at year-end 2015 had been convicted of a drug offense as their most serious infraction." Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...
- mbg721 5y agoEven if you accept that most prisoners have committed crimes that actually ought to be crimes, "trivially" is pretty callous. Ever been in a group that started to do something you didn't like?
- vonmoltke 5y ago> As it is, using prison populations to provide lower-cost-than-otherwise-legal labor for private corporations creates a huge mountain of perverse incentives. The vast majority of prison labor is for the direct benefit of the states or the federal government, not private companies. Still a huge mountain of perverse incentives, though.
- dionidium 5y ago> If any sort of majority of our prison population had committed violent crimes This is more or less a myth, depending on how you define "violent" and how you define "prison population." No matter how you define those terms, "a significant percentage of the prison population is there for a serious non-drug crime" should be uncontroversial. Source: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html Memes about mass incarceration have been almost too successful, so that people now have the wrong idea in the other direction. According to Wikipedia, "15 percent of state prisoners at year-end 2015 had been convicted of a drug offense as their most serious infraction." That is enough of a scandal on its own terms, but people have sort of inflated the claims beyond what's really supported by the evidence. It's 15%, not "most" and not a majority, etc. In fact most prisoners are there for serious non-drug offenses. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...
- AndyMcConachie 5y agoPay them for their labor, and don't force them to do it if they don't want to. Forced labor and incarceration are two different things that don't depend on one another. You can incarcerate people without forcing them to work.