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I'd like anyone who considers more harsh jail punishments to be the solution to consider that the USA has the highest per-capita prison population in the world.

I'd like anyone who considers more harsh jail punishments to be the solution to consider that the USA has the highest per-capita prison population in the world. Only 1/5 of those prisoners is in there for drug-related crime. Perhaps harsher punishments aren't going to help here.

Bostonian 5y ago
I don't want to incarcerate a first-time shoplifter, but a habitual thief deserves to spend some time in jail, and the threat of jail will deter people from being habitual thieves.
- ahh 5y ago
  If they spend time in jail after the first time, maybe they won't become a habitual thief.
  - ryan93 5y ago
    In fact its impossible to steal from a CVS while in jail.
  - notthemessiah 5y ago
    Nah, prison is where they learn how to get away with it next time from hardened criminals.
    - Ekaros 5y ago
      I don't really believe on that theory. On other hand whole being marked felon thing is what really destroys the future. If you can't get a decent job, what options do you have left?
- tomlockwood 5y ago
  > the threat of jail will deter people from being habitual thieves. It'd appear though that given probability, an American is more likely to be in jail than the citizen of any other country, but even with this high threat of jail, these crimes seem to be on the rise.
  - berberous 5y ago
    America is a huge country, with a state and local laws that are inconsistent over both geography and time. It can be true that we over jail and impose longer sentences in some places, in some past eras, and/or for some crimes, to no good effect, while also in other places, other times, or for certain crimes, under punish such that there is zero deterrent effect when there needs to be at least some.
    - tomlockwood 5y ago
      Since America is such a huge outlier in terms of jailing people, my thinking is that we ought to compare America to other similar countries and see what the differences are. Pressing the "harsher punishments" button would seem premature, in my view.
      - choko 5y ago
        You should not be comparing America as a whole to most other countries. The states have historically had more autonomy resulting in more diverse sets of laws and cultures than most other countries. If you must compare, I think state level data would be a more fair comparison.
ahh 5y ago
If only 1/5th of those prisoners are there for drug-crime (and I assume you believe as I do that much drug-related crime isn't worth the arrest?) then isn't that in fact evidence that our population commits substantially more _real_ crime than in other countries? If so, then yes, let's lock them up. "Everyone steals" is not a good defense to stealing.
- tomlockwood 5y ago
  > "Everyone steals" is not a good defense to stealing. I'm not defending stealing, I'm saying for all crime in America, the deterrent of jail doesn't appear to be working. That button has already been pressed, hard.
  - foogazi 5y ago
    > the deterrent of jail doesn't appear to be working. Deterrent ? It does work, the people in jail are not stealing
    - tomlockwood 5y ago
      The USA has the most people in the world in the jail and this article is about the rising shoplifting problem. You are correct, those people that are currently in jail are not stealing.
      - jimmygrapes 5y ago
        And those currently stealing are not in jail.
        tomlockwood 5y ago
        And if we jail every single citizen of the USA, there will be no stealing! Perfect.
        Fatnino 5y ago
bitshiftfaced 5y ago
For that conclusion, wouldn't you need to show that the USA has a higher rate of shoplifting and also a higher rate of incarcerated shoplifters per capita?
- tomlockwood 5y ago
  My conclusion is only that the harsher punishment button has, overall, already been pushed in America. This isn't an argument about shoplifting specifically.
  - bitshiftfaced 5y ago
    Out of curiosity, I pulled up 73 countries that list prisoners per capita as well as theft per capita. There wasn't any meaningful correlation.
    - tomlockwood 5y ago
      I didn't really expect there to be a correlation.
      - bitshiftfaced 5y ago
        Your argument presupposed that those who want harsher punishments do so because punishment is tied to crime per capita. If the two are unrelated, then it may be that people want harsher punishments anyway just as you don't want harsher punishments anyway.
        tomlockwood 5y ago
        > Your argument presupposed that those who want harsher punishments do so because punishment is tied to crime per capita. What? No.
MattGaiser 5y ago
Consider another few possibilities. 1. Americans are just more likely to be criminals. 2. Other nations may be equally or even more ineffective at tackling crime. The assumption that jail doesn't work rests on the assumption that other nations track crime as effectively and that their people are equally criminal.
- tomlockwood 5y ago
  I'm totally behind 1, open to any evidence of 2. The question then if we decide 1 is the case is - why? What predisposes Americans to, the most jailable crime in the world?
  - phendrenad2 5y ago
    Let's figure out if it's 1 or 2 first.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    I don’t have anything other than anecdotal stories I would rather not share publicly, but it essentially amounts to there not being any resources to handle non-violent crime (and even violent crime against men is anecdotally ignored). There just isn’t the capacity of the system to deal with how terrible so many people are and the end result of that is cops not bothering to even record instances as they don’t think it will matter. This is Canada.
- otikik 5y ago
  Here’s another option one: 3. The American system is putting a lot of innocent people behind bars.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    While letting the actual criminals go free for those crimes? Possibly.
- disambiguation 5y ago
  1. Quickly becomes an uncomfortable conversation for most people when you look at the crime stats breakdown by demographic.
phendrenad2 5y ago
Locking people up also increases the tax burden on everyone else, because housing someone in a prison isn't free. The real solutions will be technical. More precise delivery tracking (so you know when your package will arrive, so it doesn't get stolen off your porch an hour later). Drone delivery. Package lockers. Man traps at the supermarket exits.
cjbgkagh 5y ago
I'm not a big fan of jailing as concentrating prisoners into a single location with lots of time and little oversight sounds prima facie a really bad idea. I think corporal punishment should be considered as an alternative. Hard to be a cool gangster when you have a sore ass.
mynameishere 5y ago
What a perfectly irrational thing to say. "We've got to go easy on these derelicts...because there are so many, and so many are even worse!"
- tomlockwood 5y ago
  I'm purely making an argument against the reflex to demand harsher punishments. If harsher punishment always worked to deter criminals, we'd have the death penalty for every crime.
buscoquadnary 5y ago
This shoplifting epidemic is happening because no one is going to jail for this. The DA has made clear they won't prosecute these crimes so the shoplifters have no fear of getting caught and know they will be released soon.
- tomlockwood 5y ago
  > This shoplifting epidemic is happening because no one is going to jail for this. Is that true? https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/17/walmart-shoplifting-helping-hike-sentences-court https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/17/walmart-shop...
  - buscoquadnary 5y ago
    The article you have provided is from 2018 and primarily deals with a single individual that had several other outstanding warrants, it has no bearing on what was stated prior.
    - tomlockwood 5y ago
      It sounded like what you said was "This shoplifting epidemic is happening because no one is going to jail for this." I disagree, I do think people are going to jail for this.
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    I don't think that they literally meant "no one", but rather that a small group of people commit a majority of the crimes, and if those people were behind bars, the crimes rates would fall back to normal levels. There is evidence to support this thesis. First, we do know that a small group of people commit most of the crimes. Second, we see that in the U.S. when we let people out of institutions the crime rate went up until mass incarceration removed a roughly equivalent amount of people from society. So there are about 2 million people who commit a huge number of crimes, and we need to decide, as a society, whether to lock these people up or live with the higher crime rates. I don't think there is much evidence that criminals can actually be treated somehow to be reformed, they are either tolerated* or warehoused until they age out. (*) One middle ground of toleration you see in developing countries is creating zones where crimes can be committed more freely and rich people can buy their own security or live in zones where crimes are punished. Then criminals learn to avoid those zones. That's what a lot of nations (such as Argentina) do which have a large criminal class (like the U.S.) but that can't afford the costs of mass incarceration. They create geographic bubbles in which crime is low.
berberous 5y ago
How many of those are recent convicts vs people serving long sentences piling up? I feel like no one advocates for a middle ground. I usually don’t believe in locking people up excessively. I also don’t believe in effectively legalizing crime by never persecuting petty theft. If it’s your second or third time shoplifting in bulk, I think a 6 month prison sentence is appropriate. There needs to be some penalty to disincentivize such behavior.
- sershe 5y ago
  The real problem with jails is that they (1) destroy your life outside and, (2) have you spend time surrounded by other criminals. So, they make it more likely that you will become/remain a criminal once you come out, even after a short time. So, the middle ground doesn't really work well; we either have to try hard to not put someone in prison, or we basically commit to putting them in prison forever. Because we cannot really say the latter part out loud we release them occasionally and then put them back. The argument currently appears to be between these two extremes in isolation, and the real middle ground IMHO would be to do both things, to different people. But moderate punishment might be the worst of both worlds.
shakezula 5y ago
I’d also like anyone who promotes harsher punishments to actually go through the system for just a day before they insist on locking others into it. Getting arrested permanently changed my view on our justice system. It was a nonviolent offense, related to a paperwork issue, but it resulted in a bench warrant being issued for me. If I hadn’t just received several thousand dollars in my account from an unexpected windfall, I would not have been able to pay the jail fees. Not fines for the ticket - which was completely dropped - the jail fees for simply being arrested. The total out the door cost to get arrested was north of $2100 for me. You can beat the case, but you can’t beat the ride.
- jevoten 5y ago
  How are jail fees not illegal extra-judicial punishment?
  - shakezula 5y ago
    :shrugs: I’m honestly not sure. Between the bail system and privately owned jails, the entire system seems designed to exploit the most vulnerable members of society.
    - iJohnDoe 5y ago
      > designed to exploit the most vulnerable members of society. Full stop there. No other explanation really needed.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > How are jail fees not illegal extra-judicial punishment The argument is that they are in law (so not illegal) and compensatory rather than punitive (so not punishment.) This is contentious, though, and jails have sometimes lost legal cases around them, e.g.: https://spectrumnews1.com/ky/louisville/news/2021/11/03/ruling-issued-on-case-involving-fees-for-kentucky-inmates https://spectrumnews1.com/ky/louisville/news/2021/11/03/ruli... The main reason for them, of course, is that while mass incarceration policies are popular with those bit subjected to them, paying for mass incarceration is not.
kcplate 5y ago
> Perhaps harsher punishments aren't going to help here. Harsher than “no punishment” might
seanmcdirmid 5y ago
I get it. But why after we are asked to decriminalize meth and heroin are we being asked to spend a lot of money on drug rehab and housing for people whose lives have fallen apart because of fentanyl? Or that we should just accept that they need to steal those LEGOs at Target to fund their addiction and there shouldn’t be any consequences? I agree that harsher punishments would not work, but compassion that simply enables this behavior isn’t the way either. Honestly, the way the suburbs (like Bellevue WA) handle the problem via simple police intimidation (every incident is met with overwhelming police presence) to push the problems on more open nearby cities (Seattle in this case) seems to be the only that works (locally at least, it doesn’t solve the problem at all regionally or nationally).
zthrowaway 5y ago
We have a high prison population so thus we shouldn’t penalize criminals? How does this even make logical sense? Maybe we have a lot of criminals because our society is decaying. Which it very much is. Drug addiction is a separate issue. Crimes have victims, do they not matter? Rampant theft leads to businesses moving out of the area, which harms the community. There are plenty of reasons to punish this behavior.
- tomlockwood 5y ago
  > Maybe we have a lot of criminals because our society is decaying. Ok, so maybe addressing that will be more fruitful than baying for more punishment!
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    It can be both/and, rather than either/or. We can try to fix a decaying society, and not let criminals run wild in the meantime.
    - tomlockwood 5y ago
      Ok, but characterizing criminals as "running wild" in the country with literally the most criminals behind bars, seems odd!
      - josephcsible 5y ago
        Not every country has the same number of criminals total. Just because we have the most behind bars doesn't mean that we don't also have the most running wild.
        tomlockwood 5y ago
        And why does America produce more criminals? Can we address the root cause rather than the symptom?
chrismcb 5y ago
Considering the current punishment is nothing... Yeah a harsher punishment will help. Didn't necessarily mean that it should be jail time.
sershe 5y ago
This is probably an opinion that I have that is the furthest away from the overton window, but while I wholeheartedly agree (and think drugs should be legalized FWIW), I draw a very different conclusion. Jails definitely don't work as rehabilitation and only prevent crime via removal from society. Also, they are very expensive. So, for better removal, I think habitual criminals (violent or property) should simply be executed. The only problem with death penalty for those who refuse to respect others' negative rights really is the risk of false convictions, and after 3 separate robberies or 5 thefts it is basically 0.

Bostonian 5y ago

I don't want to incarcerate a first-time shoplifter, but a habitual thief deserves to spend some time in jail, and the threat of jail will deter people from being habitual thieves.

ahh 5y ago
If they spend time in jail after the first time, maybe they won't become a habitual thief.
- ryan93 5y ago
  In fact its impossible to steal from a CVS while in jail.
- notthemessiah 5y ago
  Nah, prison is where they learn how to get away with it next time from hardened criminals.
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    I don't really believe on that theory. On other hand whole being marked felon thing is what really destroys the future. If you can't get a decent job, what options do you have left?
tomlockwood 5y ago
> the threat of jail will deter people from being habitual thieves. It'd appear though that given probability, an American is more likely to be in jail than the citizen of any other country, but even with this high threat of jail, these crimes seem to be on the rise.
- berberous 5y ago
  America is a huge country, with a state and local laws that are inconsistent over both geography and time. It can be true that we over jail and impose longer sentences in some places, in some past eras, and/or for some crimes, to no good effect, while also in other places, other times, or for certain crimes, under punish such that there is zero deterrent effect when there needs to be at least some.
  - tomlockwood 5y ago
    Since America is such a huge outlier in terms of jailing people, my thinking is that we ought to compare America to other similar countries and see what the differences are. Pressing the "harsher punishments" button would seem premature, in my view.
    - choko 5y ago
      You should not be comparing America as a whole to most other countries. The states have historically had more autonomy resulting in more diverse sets of laws and cultures than most other countries. If you must compare, I think state level data would be a more fair comparison.

ahh 5y ago

If only 1/5th of those prisoners are there for drug-crime (and I assume you believe as I do that much drug-related crime isn't worth the arrest?) then isn't that in fact evidence that our population commits substantially more _real_ crime than in other countries? If so, then yes, let's lock them up. "Everyone steals" is not a good defense to stealing.

tomlockwood 5y ago
> "Everyone steals" is not a good defense to stealing. I'm not defending stealing, I'm saying for all crime in America, the deterrent of jail doesn't appear to be working. That button has already been pressed, hard.
- foogazi 5y ago
  > the deterrent of jail doesn't appear to be working. Deterrent ? It does work, the people in jail are not stealing
  - tomlockwood 5y ago
    The USA has the most people in the world in the jail and this article is about the rising shoplifting problem. You are correct, those people that are currently in jail are not stealing.
    - jimmygrapes 5y ago
      And those currently stealing are not in jail.
      - tomlockwood 5y ago
        And if we jail every single citizen of the USA, there will be no stealing! Perfect.
        Fatnino 5y ago

bitshiftfaced 5y ago

For that conclusion, wouldn't you need to show that the USA has a higher rate of shoplifting and also a higher rate of incarcerated shoplifters per capita?

tomlockwood 5y ago
My conclusion is only that the harsher punishment button has, overall, already been pushed in America. This isn't an argument about shoplifting specifically.
- bitshiftfaced 5y ago
  Out of curiosity, I pulled up 73 countries that list prisoners per capita as well as theft per capita. There wasn't any meaningful correlation.
  - tomlockwood 5y ago
    I didn't really expect there to be a correlation.
    - bitshiftfaced 5y ago
      Your argument presupposed that those who want harsher punishments do so because punishment is tied to crime per capita. If the two are unrelated, then it may be that people want harsher punishments anyway just as you don't want harsher punishments anyway.
      - tomlockwood 5y ago
        > Your argument presupposed that those who want harsher punishments do so because punishment is tied to crime per capita. What? No.

MattGaiser 5y ago

Consider another few possibilities. 1. Americans are just more likely to be criminals. 2. Other nations may be equally or even more ineffective at tackling crime. The assumption that jail doesn't work rests on the assumption that other nations track crime as effectively and that their people are equally criminal.

tomlockwood 5y ago
I'm totally behind 1, open to any evidence of 2. The question then if we decide 1 is the case is - why? What predisposes Americans to, the most jailable crime in the world?
- phendrenad2 5y ago
  Let's figure out if it's 1 or 2 first.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  I don’t have anything other than anecdotal stories I would rather not share publicly, but it essentially amounts to there not being any resources to handle non-violent crime (and even violent crime against men is anecdotally ignored). There just isn’t the capacity of the system to deal with how terrible so many people are and the end result of that is cops not bothering to even record instances as they don’t think it will matter. This is Canada.
otikik 5y ago
Here’s another option one: 3. The American system is putting a lot of innocent people behind bars.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  While letting the actual criminals go free for those crimes? Possibly.
disambiguation 5y ago
1. Quickly becomes an uncomfortable conversation for most people when you look at the crime stats breakdown by demographic.

phendrenad2 5y ago

Locking people up also increases the tax burden on everyone else, because housing someone in a prison isn't free. The real solutions will be technical. More precise delivery tracking (so you know when your package will arrive, so it doesn't get stolen off your porch an hour later). Drone delivery. Package lockers. Man traps at the supermarket exits.

cjbgkagh 5y ago

I'm not a big fan of jailing as concentrating prisoners into a single location with lots of time and little oversight sounds prima facie a really bad idea. I think corporal punishment should be considered as an alternative. Hard to be a cool gangster when you have a sore ass.

mynameishere 5y ago

What a perfectly irrational thing to say. "We've got to go easy on these derelicts...because there are so many, and so many are even worse!"

tomlockwood 5y ago
I'm purely making an argument against the reflex to demand harsher punishments. If harsher punishment always worked to deter criminals, we'd have the death penalty for every crime.

buscoquadnary 5y ago

This shoplifting epidemic is happening because no one is going to jail for this. The DA has made clear they won't prosecute these crimes so the shoplifters have no fear of getting caught and know they will be released soon.

tomlockwood 5y ago
> This shoplifting epidemic is happening because no one is going to jail for this. Is that true? https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/17/walmart-shoplifting-helping-hike-sentences-court https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/17/walmart-shop...
- buscoquadnary 5y ago
  The article you have provided is from 2018 and primarily deals with a single individual that had several other outstanding warrants, it has no bearing on what was stated prior.
  - tomlockwood 5y ago
    It sounded like what you said was "This shoplifting epidemic is happening because no one is going to jail for this." I disagree, I do think people are going to jail for this.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  I don't think that they literally meant "no one", but rather that a small group of people commit a majority of the crimes, and if those people were behind bars, the crimes rates would fall back to normal levels. There is evidence to support this thesis. First, we do know that a small group of people commit most of the crimes. Second, we see that in the U.S. when we let people out of institutions the crime rate went up until mass incarceration removed a roughly equivalent amount of people from society. So there are about 2 million people who commit a huge number of crimes, and we need to decide, as a society, whether to lock these people up or live with the higher crime rates. I don't think there is much evidence that criminals can actually be treated somehow to be reformed, they are either tolerated* or warehoused until they age out. (*) One middle ground of toleration you see in developing countries is creating zones where crimes can be committed more freely and rich people can buy their own security or live in zones where crimes are punished. Then criminals learn to avoid those zones. That's what a lot of nations (such as Argentina) do which have a large criminal class (like the U.S.) but that can't afford the costs of mass incarceration. They create geographic bubbles in which crime is low.

berberous 5y ago

How many of those are recent convicts vs people serving long sentences piling up? I feel like no one advocates for a middle ground. I usually don’t believe in locking people up excessively. I also don’t believe in effectively legalizing crime by never persecuting petty theft. If it’s your second or third time shoplifting in bulk, I think a 6 month prison sentence is appropriate. There needs to be some penalty to disincentivize such behavior.

sershe 5y ago
The real problem with jails is that they (1) destroy your life outside and, (2) have you spend time surrounded by other criminals. So, they make it more likely that you will become/remain a criminal once you come out, even after a short time. So, the middle ground doesn't really work well; we either have to try hard to not put someone in prison, or we basically commit to putting them in prison forever. Because we cannot really say the latter part out loud we release them occasionally and then put them back. The argument currently appears to be between these two extremes in isolation, and the real middle ground IMHO would be to do both things, to different people. But moderate punishment might be the worst of both worlds.

shakezula 5y ago

I’d also like anyone who promotes harsher punishments to actually go through the system for just a day before they insist on locking others into it. Getting arrested permanently changed my view on our justice system. It was a nonviolent offense, related to a paperwork issue, but it resulted in a bench warrant being issued for me. If I hadn’t just received several thousand dollars in my account from an unexpected windfall, I would not have been able to pay the jail fees. Not fines for the ticket - which was completely dropped - the jail fees for simply being arrested. The total out the door cost to get arrested was north of $2100 for me. You can beat the case, but you can’t beat the ride.

jevoten 5y ago
How are jail fees not illegal extra-judicial punishment?
- shakezula 5y ago
  :shrugs: I’m honestly not sure. Between the bail system and privately owned jails, the entire system seems designed to exploit the most vulnerable members of society.
  - iJohnDoe 5y ago
    > designed to exploit the most vulnerable members of society. Full stop there. No other explanation really needed.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > How are jail fees not illegal extra-judicial punishment The argument is that they are in law (so not illegal) and compensatory rather than punitive (so not punishment.) This is contentious, though, and jails have sometimes lost legal cases around them, e.g.: https://spectrumnews1.com/ky/louisville/news/2021/11/03/ruling-issued-on-case-involving-fees-for-kentucky-inmates https://spectrumnews1.com/ky/louisville/news/2021/11/03/ruli... The main reason for them, of course, is that while mass incarceration policies are popular with those bit subjected to them, paying for mass incarceration is not.

kcplate 5y ago

> Perhaps harsher punishments aren't going to help here. Harsher than “no punishment” might

seanmcdirmid 5y ago

I get it. But why after we are asked to decriminalize meth and heroin are we being asked to spend a lot of money on drug rehab and housing for people whose lives have fallen apart because of fentanyl? Or that we should just accept that they need to steal those LEGOs at Target to fund their addiction and there shouldn’t be any consequences? I agree that harsher punishments would not work, but compassion that simply enables this behavior isn’t the way either. Honestly, the way the suburbs (like Bellevue WA) handle the problem via simple police intimidation (every incident is met with overwhelming police presence) to push the problems on more open nearby cities (Seattle in this case) seems to be the only that works (locally at least, it doesn’t solve the problem at all regionally or nationally).

zthrowaway 5y ago

We have a high prison population so thus we shouldn’t penalize criminals? How does this even make logical sense? Maybe we have a lot of criminals because our society is decaying. Which it very much is. Drug addiction is a separate issue. Crimes have victims, do they not matter? Rampant theft leads to businesses moving out of the area, which harms the community. There are plenty of reasons to punish this behavior.

tomlockwood 5y ago
> Maybe we have a lot of criminals because our society is decaying. Ok, so maybe addressing that will be more fruitful than baying for more punishment!
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  It can be both/and, rather than either/or. We can try to fix a decaying society, and not let criminals run wild in the meantime.
  - tomlockwood 5y ago
    Ok, but characterizing criminals as "running wild" in the country with literally the most criminals behind bars, seems odd!
    - josephcsible 5y ago
      Not every country has the same number of criminals total. Just because we have the most behind bars doesn't mean that we don't also have the most running wild.
      - tomlockwood 5y ago
        And why does America produce more criminals? Can we address the root cause rather than the symptom?

chrismcb 5y ago

Considering the current punishment is nothing... Yeah a harsher punishment will help. Didn't necessarily mean that it should be jail time.

sershe 5y ago

This is probably an opinion that I have that is the furthest away from the overton window, but while I wholeheartedly agree (and think drugs should be legalized FWIW), I draw a very different conclusion. Jails definitely don't work as rehabilitation and only prevent crime via removal from society. Also, they are very expensive. So, for better removal, I think habitual criminals (violent or property) should simply be executed. The only problem with death penalty for those who refuse to respect others' negative rights really is the risk of false convictions, and after 3 separate robberies or 5 thefts it is basically 0.