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Comment by RcouF1uZ4gsC | Hacker News Reader

>Being sentenced to prison had no significant effects on arrests or convictions for violent crimes after release from prison, but imprisonment modestly reduced the probability of violence if comparisons included the effects of incapacitation during imprisonment.

So in the final accounting, probation increases the probability of violence while imprisonment reduces it. Imprisonment reduces violence while the offender is in prison, and it doesn't seem like it increases arrests or convictions afterward.

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> imprisonment modestly reduced the probability of violence if comparisons included the effects of incapacitation during imprisonment.

I'd have to read the article to confirm, but at first glance that reads like it might be "Prison damages people so much that that are physically incapable of violence." That's... not exactly a stunning endorsement of the system.

That means that people in jail can't go and kill random people at street, so those people commit less violence.

I believe the reading of “incorporating incapacitation” means that jail makes people physically sicker and injured. The act of jailing someone is commuting violence to them, in the same way that reoffense rates go to zero for all criminals who are punished via death penalty.

In academic literature about criminal law, "incapacitation" has the very specific meaning that somebody who is in jail is not able to commit crimes on the street. It has nothing to do with their health (even if they may suffer a health impact).

In final accounting, in the words of the authors:

These results suggest that for individuals on the current policy margin between prison and probation, imprisonment is an ineffective long-term intervention for violence prevention, as it has, on balance, no rehabilitative or deterrent effects after release.

Yes, the words of the authors. But the final accounting according to the data of the authors: during incarceration they commit no crimes against society and after incarceration they resume committing crime at the same rate as if they had not been locked up. So, longer incarceration reduces crime.

I don't know if that conclusion is actually true or not. It seems as though it would be as long as criminality didn't increase after incarceration to an extent that more than canceled the reduction during incarceration, but they claim that doesn't happen. Well, okay then, longer sentences reduce crime by, as they say, "incapacitating" the criminal during his incarceration.

They seem to be burying that lede.

> So, longer incarceration reduces crime.

Killing them would also reduce crime (https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/cells.png) but I don't think that this is enough of a metric to judge something as good for society

> deterrent effects after release

These studies are always done on people who were undeterred by the possibility of incarceration in the first place.

It’s hard to imagine a bigger selection bias. It’d be like testing the efficacy of a drug, but only on patients for whom it didn’t work the first time.

ROI

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