This ignores two things, first of which is "Empirical research on the relationship between length of incarceration and recidivism is limited and insufficient fo

This ignores two things, first of which is "Empirical research on the relationship between length of incarceration and recidivism is limited and insufficient for developing federal sentencing policy" [1]. There is no guarantee that any sentence that would at all be reasonable for the crime would reduce the rate, and in fact that study I cited did not find any deterrent effect for sentences less than 5 years. The second part I feel you miss are the as many as 14,000 other people arrested for shoplifting. If 6,000 is less than 1/3, than there were about 20,000 arrests. Your "Criminals commit crimes, a lot" seems to ignore all the other people. Extending incarceration wouldn't just affect the repeat offenders, but would also lock a massive number of poor people. You say class is just a distraction, but the very articles you cite bring up poverty as a factor. Bringing up the decrease in robbery rate in Ireland is also a bit misleading, as they had a much lower number of robberies per 100,000 people (about half the rate)[2][3] to begin with, as compared to the US (the subject of this article). That means fewer people are responsible for a higher percentage of the crime. [1]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... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/191235/reported-robbery-rate-in-the-us-since-1990/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/191235/reported-robbery-... [3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/191235/reported-robbery-rate-in-the-us-since-1990/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/191235/reported-robbery-...