> Our real problem is just the pendulum swinging too far towards assuming people want to be good and they just need some compassion. There's an entire field of

> Our real problem is just the pendulum swinging too far towards assuming people want to be good and they just need some compassion. There's an entire field of study covering how ineffective punitive justice is. Unless the perpetrator at hand is literally an irredeemable monster, locking them away in a box until they're later released with even more stigmas, even further behind the curve, and without the ability to earn a living does nothing except push them right back to the anti-social behavior that put them on the radar of the justice system in the first place. All evidence on the subject points to the same thing: the best predictor of who will be a criminal and who won't is their zip code, because of things like under-served communities and generational poverty. When you give people no options to make a living in a pro-social way, they will do it in an anti-social one. Does that mean every person in the justice system just needs a firm pat on the back and to be released? Fuck no. But if you long term want to actually reduce crime, the evidence is in: you do that by improving home lives and giving communities the resources they need to grow, not by locking people up.