> Yes, I do, and I think we are creating more victims of crime over the long term with with our current approach to incarceration
I think you are very wrong here, but I don’t think that there is anything at all that could possibly convince you otherwise.
> I really hope you have the opportunity to meet and spend time with people who have done significant time in prison. There are some absolute shit people in prison, but the vast majority of them are really well-meaning, well-intentioned, loving human beings who've made mistakes.
The only people I know who have been in prison are members of my extended family, who I would by no means describe as well-meaning, well intentioned, loving human beings. So no, I don’t find very convincing.
But, even granting this, if someone is found by the justice system to have committed a serious, felony-level “mistake” three separate times (which in practice means he committed this “mistake” many more times, given the gaps in detection and conviction rates), it is beside the point whether they were “well-intentioned”: if they repeatedly keep “finding themselves in poor situations that result in victims”, we need to prevent them from creating any more victims, and prison is extremely effective at this job.
> People are the product of inter-generational poverty and struggling in large part due to, you guessed it, the massive scale of incarceration in this country.
In huge swaths of the world, poverty is much, much higher than in poorest places in America, but crime is relatively nonexistent. Consider, for example, Bangladesh, where average income is less than what you get in US from food stamps alone, but homicide rate is less than half of US. Even in US, huge majority of poor people do not commit crime. Being poor is extremely poor excuse for crime, when huge majority of the poor manages to avoid breaking into other people’s homes to steal their valuables, or beating other people to within an inch of their life.
> But given a lot of circumstances, I understand why they made the choices they did, even if someone else got hurt as a result. It doesn't justify it, but it's understandable.
In many cases I also do understand that, but it only makes me despise them even more. Overwhelming majority of people, including very poor and down-trodden people would not do the same thing in their shoes. However, in other cases I simply do not find any reasonable explanation whatsoever. The guy who threatened to beat me up as I was waiting for the bus has no reason to do it whatsoever, and he definitely did not appear loving and well intentioned.
> These are real human beings and it's really sad to hear you don't care about the well-being of fellow humans.
Yes, I do not care about the well being of some fellow humans, if they committed acts which clearly and unequivocally proved them not deserving of being treated charitably, and who by those acts destroyed well being of many other people. Crime is really heinous thing, and its damaging impact on victims is really understated. You asked me to meet and spend time with crime perpetrators. I ask you in return to spend time with crime victims instead. It appears to me that you care much less about them than about people victimizing them.