> the chilling effect of "I knew a guy who did this and is still in jail so I won't do it." This sounds logical to many people. But the actual empirical resear

> the chilling effect of "I knew a guy who did this and is still in jail so I won't do it." This sounds logical to many people. But the actual empirical research in the area finds no strong link between sentence length and recidivism [1]. We can get better outcomes by, for example, making it easier for criminals to stay in contact with their family while in prison. An alternative explanation is that your average criminal isn't very good at thinking about consequences. https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-publications/research-publications/2020/20200429_Recidivism-SentLength.pdf https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-pu...