Even if jail were completely ineffective as a deterrent (which isn't true), it would still prevent crime, since the rest of the world is safe from prisoners while they're in jail.
Does this mean you would be in favor of judicial reform that prevented those convicted of non-violent crimes from going to prison? No reason to keep someone locked up on a petty possession charge if our concern is safety of others.
Locking people up only prevents them committing crime while they're locked up. It doesn't do anything to solve the actual problem.
The only thing that is actually a deterrent is actually catching criminals [1]. No criminal does what they do expecting that they'll get caught and then weighing the crime against the potential sentence.
> Of course it does. To say it doesn’t is fallacious.
"trust me bro, its common sense"
[1] https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-best-way-to-end-mass-incarc...
Does it fix the problem? Does it get the people they scammed their money back?
Furthermore, you are therefore implying that if we did not issue any prison sentences then we would have the same amount of crime as we do now (or possibly you think it would be less) because the threat of prison has no effect of deterrence. That is unbelievably ridiculous.
Let's put it this way - suppose someone is too illiterate to get a job (like a huge chunk of the prison population) and turns to theft to support themselves, possibly because they have a drug habit. Does locking them in prison make them any more less addicted to drugs, or any more able to get a job? Does it actually solve the underlying problem?
I believe that if you CAN be rehabilitated into society, you SHOULD be, and any imprisonment should be used for that purpose and that purpose alone.
If you CANNOT be rehabilitated into society, you shouldn't be imprisoned with the other people who can be, but should be put off in a group of your other "irredeemable" peers or something.
I think anyone CAN be rehabilitated, by the way, but not everyone will want to.
What studies show about this over and over is that being in certain situations increases the likelihood of a given person committing a certain crime. If you remove them from the situation, but now someone else is in that situation, the likelihood of the crime is being committed is unchanged.
Now people there is variance in how resistant people are to the influences of those situations, and it varies both by individual and by the specific crime. It's possible that eventually you will have imprisoned everyone who would ever commit a crime under any circumstances, or at least under the current ones. I don't find the costs of that acceptable, both financially and in terms of human suffering. But if you do you should argue for that, rather than lean on the implicit point that some people are inherently criminal by their natures and so should be isolated for it.
How is this not just another way of saying "some people are inherently criminal by their nature"?
I'd also add there is nuance here. Not everyone in a situation will behave the same way. What's changing is the tendency towards behavior due to environment.
So everybody in the US just has a random small chance of becoming a school shooter or serial killer?
I assume you support complete elimination of the criminal justice system and courts then, because in your worldview it seems criminals have no agency and the chance of them committing a crime is 100% a function of their environment.