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.
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?
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...