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Comment by larnmar | Hacker News Reader

This. And yet, in a sort of collective Gell-Mann amnesia, I’m pretty sure that tomorrow I’ll load up HN, there’ll be an article on prisons, and people will be upvoted for solemnly intoning how terrible it is that so many Americans are in prison, with dissenters greyed out and soon shadowbanned.

So let me take this opportunity to say: there are far too few Anericans in prison. The number should be much higher. Prison sentences should be mandatory, they should be long, and they should be severe.

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Even if what you are proposing doesn’t work, in the sense that recidivism remains high, the alternative proposed by Western countries seems to be just to give up on enforcing any kind of punishment.

Rehabilitation as practised in the Scandinavian countries works for the homogenous populations they have.

In countries like New Zealand they are “addressing” the issue of overrepresentation of certain demographics in the crime stats by arresting them less. Yep.

All I know is, I have never felt as safe as I have in Japan, South Korea and Singapore, with conviction rates of 99%, in the US and other Anglophile countries I’m always worried shit is going to go down, it does, and I have seen it go down several times.

And in the non-US Anglo countries, the cops are basically useless and want the crime to happen with physical evidence, before they do jack about it.

I want the criminals to shit bricks when the cops come, not laugh and outgun them.

I hope you get the opportunity to learn the folly of your vision first hand, without leaving a path of destroyed lives in your wake. Your vision is short sighted, ignorant of how the world works, and lacks even the most basic amounts of humanity. I am appalled to see such vitriol here. Your own words paint yourself to be of the same character as those you would thrust into prison over petty crimes.

But you already imprison more people (per capita) than most if not all other rich countries. Why do you have so much crime in the first place? It seems to me like identifying those issues will serve as a first step towards a long term solution.

So long as us politicians campaign money depends on them not understanding why crime is as bad as it is then crime will continue to get worse.

"So let me take this opportunity to say: there are far too few Anericans in prison. The number should be much higher. Prison sentences should be mandatory, they should be long, and they should be severe."

This has GOT to be a troll.

What makes you say too few in jail? Do you have any evidence that more people in jail=better outcomes? I’m willing to listen in good faith.

I'd say not having bicycle chop shops out in the open in broad daylight is a better outcome, wouldn't you?

Sorry out of town. Do you have any empirical evidence that will work?

Pretty rare that someone would come on Hacker News and advocate for torture. Do you have any data that shows that what you are advocating for is effective or are you arguing that public policy should focus on using sadistic practices for no reason?

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