Nobody has come up with any system of punishment that provably provides deterrence or rehabilitation. When someone does, there will be some point in complaining the existing alternative doesn’t. A criterion all alternatives fail is not a basis for a decision.
How about security? Well, yes, prison isn’t particularly necessary for rendering corporate fraudsters not a threat, but, how much of the prison population is such? For the ordinary run of thieves and violent criminals, prison does prevent further predation on the populace for the duration of their stays. But would we be safe if they went free? The author claimed only a “small minority” of prisoners are habitual dangers. Well, the rate at which prisoners released in 1994 were re-arrested for a felony or serious misdemeanor within 3 years was 67.5%, and the re-conviction rate was 46.9%. That doesn’t seem like a “small minority” to me. USDOJ Recidivism of Prisoners Released study
The author mentions that if security were the goal, “people found guilty of attempted murder would go to prison for as long as murderers.” Well? The Model Penal Code, in fact, does provide the same punishment for both attempted and successful crimes down the whole list. This is not consistently implemented by the states, but it is a standard that most codifications have been moved toward in the last 50 years.
And when we get to his claim that imprisonment is more severe a punishment than execution, well, certainly the people facing execution seem to fairly consistently prefer extending their prison stays to death. That would seem to be a better indication of the severity from the convict’s perspective than the author’s imagination.
I haven’t read the article, but I want to point out that prisons are enormously costly. So there is still much to gain potentially even if the new system is only equally effective at deterrence and rehabilitation.
The fact that prisons are inhumane is another issue, of course.
Nobody has come up with any system of punishment that provably provides deterrence or rehabilitation. When someone does, there will be some point in complaining the existing alternative doesn’t. A criterion all alternatives fail is not a basis for a decision.
How about security? Well, yes, prison isn’t particularly necessary for rendering corporate fraudsters not a threat, but, how much of the prison population is such? For the ordinary run of thieves and violent criminals, prison does prevent further predation on the populace for the duration of their stays. But would we be safe if they went free? The author claimed only a “small minority” of prisoners are habitual dangers. Well, the rate at which prisoners released in 1994 were re-arrested for a felony or serious misdemeanor within 3 years was 67.5%, and the re-conviction rate was 46.9%. That doesn’t seem like a “small minority” to me. USDOJ Recidivism of Prisoners Released study
The author mentions that if security were the goal, “people found guilty of attempted murder would go to prison for as long as murderers.” Well? The Model Penal Code, in fact, does provide the same punishment for both attempted and successful crimes down the whole list. This is not consistently implemented by the states, but it is a standard that most codifications have been moved toward in the last 50 years.
And when we get to his claim that imprisonment is more severe a punishment than execution, well, certainly the people facing execution seem to fairly consistently prefer extending their prison stays to death. That would seem to be a better indication of the severity from the convict’s perspective than the author’s imagination.
I haven’t read the article, but I want to point out that prisons are enormously costly. So there is still much to gain potentially even if the new system is only equally effective at deterrence and rehabilitation.
The fact that prisons are inhumane is another issue, of course.