The case for capping all prison sentences at 20 years | Hacker News Reader

The case for capping all prison sentences at 20 years

vox.com

33 pointsdocker_up12 comments

> Studies have found that people almost always age out of crime

This is in the local news today, DNA matched on a rape from 1990, the suspect was in jail already on another case. https://www.wxii12.com/article/dna-evidence-helps-winston-sa...

Yeah, people with rap sheets, I don’t think tend to age out of criminality.

Young offenders (most?), yeah, I believe they have the potential to age out as they mature and are given avenues to pursue other civil endeavors.

I know personally both kinds of cases but unfortunately the career criminals are not as rare really as they seem to be for this author

One problem is that this has follow-on effects of reducing sentences for other crimes. For example, murder would be 20 years because that is the cap. What do you make rape? You don't want to make it 20 years since then that incentivizes the perpetrator to always kill the victim. Given the above, you are looking at 10-15 years at most for rapists. Then you need to differentiate the serial rapist (see Larry Nasser) from the non-serial rapist. All said, you are probably looking at sentences of 5-10 years for even the most heinous single rape conviction.

So long as pirating music stays at 20 years, society should be fine.

Don't forget tax evasion!

Perhaps sentences could be served consecutively rather than concurrently. That would allow a lot more scope.

Foolproof method of preventing more victims - just put all the people guilty of those 2 crimes in prison for life. That way, they can never get out and re-offend.

There's already too many cases of someone getting a sentence of only a few years for one of those crimes, and then upon getting out, reoffending in the same or worse way within a few months.

This was, essentially, the basis for the 3 strikes initiatives.

Practical arguments are irrelevant. Some crimes deserve longer incarcerations therefore we have the unpleasant obligation to do so. That's justice.

It is perfectly reasonable to argue that actually, practical arguments are the only ones that are relevant. It is not inherently apparent which crimes deserves how much incarceration without analyzing each one case by case.

What about adding caning to the sentences ?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com