> My understanding is that crime is mostly a young person's thing. The older people get the less likely they're to commit crime. This makes sense; younger peop

> My understanding is that crime is mostly a young person's thing. The older people get the less likely they're to commit crime. This makes sense; younger people tend to be less risk averse. Not sure if “aging people out” is the right solution: people who get out of prison usually have worse prospects than when they go in, so (assuming older people are in fact less likely to commit crime) we’d be trading one social problem for another (health/welfare/homelessness). Also, from an ethical standpoint, I don’t think I could get behind long incarceration times and strict punishments for petty crimes just to reduce the rate of crime. These are real (young) people with lives that are being upended for some mistakes.