the US is atrociously higher than it's contemporaries (a rate of ~4.8 vs ~1.0-1.5)
What is that a rate of, murders per 100k or something?
Maybe the US just has a population and/or conditions that are more prone to committing murder, that doesn't mean the country should scale back it's punishment of murderers.
It's highly doubtful that the longer sentence length(is the US's longer on average?) is somehow contributing to a higher murder rate.
What did you think about how I described sentence length as being a function of cost-benefit analysis?
That isn't to say that I think all sentences are optimum, or even near optimum, some have gotten completely out of whack, or altogether unnecessary, drug crimes for example.
> It's highly doubtful that the longer sentence length(is the US's longer on average?) is somehow contributing to a higher murder rate.
More men in prison -> more broken homes -> more people with more damage in their upbringing -> more crime
^^ that's just one potential mechanism for having demographic-sized populations of people locked up. About half a decade ago, it was estimated that one in nine black men in the US were either imprisoned or on parole. That's a lot of families missing an important member (even if not a father, a missing husband/son/brother is also an issue).
One of the problems with discussing crime (particularly in the US) is that people tend to focus on the criminal as a single individual, and not about the demographic-scale effects.
> What did you think about how I described sentence length as being a function of cost-benefit analysis?
Extremely long sentences haven't been shown to be an effective deterrent, and if anything, they mean that the prisoner is more likely to cause problems inside (if you're jailed for life, you can basically kill with impunity in the jail, for example). Long sentences mean more prisoners inside costing the taxpayer, less workers outside generating tax dollars, fewer families with present parents, and a broader 'criminal class' (and higher recidivism - if the only thing you know how to do is crime, because your skills have rotted...).
The justice system as a whole is meant to keep society running smoothly, and the penal system is part of that - it doesn't stand alone, separate unto itself. If rehabilitation and shorter sentences means that society runs better, then that should be targeted. The equation isn't as simple as "crime X costs Y dollars damage, incarceration costs Z dollars per diem, calculate for recidivism". Imprisonment has a lot of social knock-on effects.
the last part about justice system is not entirely correct - private prisons are a lucrative business in US, and owners/shareholders have very good reasons to keep as many people jailed for as long as possible. Hence the stats of US leading stats globally.
politically it's much safer to promote harsh sentencing rather than opposite, plus no Amnesty international is going to bribe (to call it correctly - hire lobbyists) US politics into shorter sentencing.
I should have been less declaritive - I mean that the point of a justice system is to keep society running smoothly. There are all sorts of ways for this to be derailed, for-profit prisons being one of them.
ok, I see.
the US is atrociously higher than it's contemporaries (a rate of ~4.8 vs ~1.0-1.5)
What is that a rate of, murders per 100k or something?
Maybe the US just has a population and/or conditions that are more prone to committing murder, that doesn't mean the country should scale back it's punishment of murderers. It's highly doubtful that the longer sentence length(is the US's longer on average?) is somehow contributing to a higher murder rate.
What did you think about how I described sentence length as being a function of cost-benefit analysis?
That isn't to say that I think all sentences are optimum, or even near optimum, some have gotten completely out of whack, or altogether unnecessary, drug crimes for example.