3 ms·
> Convince people that we need to reform prisons and jail fewer people. Well, why should it convince people of that? Perhaps people are in fact being rational.
by rsj_hn 5y ago
> Convince people that we need to reform prisons and jail fewer people.
Well, why should it convince people of that? Perhaps people are in fact being rational. When a necessary social role becomes expensive, it makes sense to make it cheaper, not to stop doing it.
Are you going to get rid of courts because it costs so much to bring someone to trial? We have a large prison population because we have a large criminal class in this country. 5 homicides per 100K, 370 violet assaults per 100K. Those are committed every year. With these statistics, having ~400 prisoners per 100K is what you would expect, if not on the low side, since we haven't even started talking about non-violent crime. If you disagree, which of these do you think should not get jail time?
Alternately, find a way to prevent crime.
- jzb 5y ago"Alternately, find a way to prevent crime." Easy. Stop criminalizing use of drugs and sex work. End the bullshit "war on drugs." We have a huge criminal class in this country. Wage theft[1], for example, is a huge criminal enterprise but almost nothing is done to stop that. We could also start working on real gun control like other countries that don't have a huge firearm homicide problem. That won't mean we end homicides, of course, but it would reduce the problem. [1] https://www.epi.org/publication/epidemic-wage-theft-costing-workers-hundreds/ https://www.epi.org/publication/epidemic-wage-theft-costing-...
- rsj_hn 5y agoThe problem with always thinking there are easy solutions is that you never solve anything. OK, we release all the drug traffickers who are only guilty of that and no other crimes. Congratulations, you've reduced the jail population by 5%. Oh wait, an even bigger group of people now fill the prisons, but for theft. Oops. But if we free all those millions of imprisoned sex workers, that will solve the problem, right? Lol. Now that you've done all the performative ineffectual stuff, you still have the expensive prisons to worry about and no fix. So what do you - change the subject and move on to provide a facile solution for some other problem? I thought so.