If you want prison to be used to keep criminals off the streets, then you have to be willing to put criminals in prison for life for even the most minor offense

If you want prison to be used to keep criminals off the streets, then you have to be willing to put criminals in prison for life for even the most minor offenses, because that's the extent you have to go to for this strategy to work. I mean can you give any non-absurd answer how you think this works? Someone knocks over a liquor store with a box cutter: is there some magic number of years in prison that they can be released where they won't reoffend? Every piece of evidence I've seen indicates that the opposite happens: people in prison are traumatized further exacerbating mental illness, connected with other criminals, and then released with a criminal record that makes it even harder for them to obtain legal employment, making crime even more attractive. This effect is generational: children separated from their parents by prison time are more likely to end up in prison themselves. Your "solution" doesn't solve crime, it causes crime. Not only does your "solution" not work, it's ethically repulsive. The vast majority of crimes are crimes of desperation, and you are so self-absorbed that you're only concerned with solving your own problem--crime--and totally unconcerned with the suffering which causes people to commit crime in the first place. Your only solution is to cause even more suffering by locking people up and throwing away the key. The causes of crime are economic, and crime will continue until that problem is addressed. It's not hard to see that if you have any care at all for your fellow humans.