Seems like a legitimate deterrent for committing a crime. If that's the reason, then it's doing a piss-poor job at deterring crime - the US incarceration rate

Seems like a legitimate deterrent for committing a crime. If that's the reason, then it's doing a piss-poor job at deterring crime - the US incarceration rate is around five times that of other western democracies (and 10 times that of places like Norway)