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> When they're 40 they'll be a different person.

Is there any evidence of that?

I say this with sympathy as I suspect some number of violent individuals have as-yet-undetected genetic abnormalities that would make them 'blameless' for their actions if we could track it down. However that wouldn't change their behavior. My son has a non-violent known genetic abnormality and in 20/40/60 years his behavior wouldn't change unless some effective treatment is found.

So I think there needs to be some realism injected into this discussion. There are people I would not want as next door neighbors even after they've served a long prison sentence.

There's a lot of evidence that most people mellow out with age, age-crime curves show this clearly with dramatic peaks in the late teens. Teenagers and young adults are more prone to acting impulsively, with less foresight for the future.

There may be some people who are irreparably 'genetically damaged' from birth and will never improve, but this isn't the general case.

I feel like most of us kind of intuitively know this at a somewhat visceral level. If a two year old does something obnoxious (e.g. throws food at you), I think most people won't be nearly as upset as if a 40 year old did. I know when my nieces or nephews do something annoying, it's substantially easier for me to roll my eyes and say something like "they're just kids, don't get angry with them" than it is when a full-on grownup annoys me.

I'm quite confident that 18 year old me was still basically a child. I never committed any violent crimes when I was 18, but I did a lot of other dumb irrational things that I don't think I'd do now.

In addition to the other reply you got from someone else:

I'm not saying they'll necessarily be great people. But people do change. Especially the understanding of consequences is not fully developed in your early 20s.

So even if they are basically the same people, they would be much less likely to act on it at 40 than at 20. And really, we're talking about deterrence of committing crimes, not deterrence of bad moral character.

> Since you're against "punishment as a whole", I assume you by "punishment" mean "I want them to suffer for what they did"?

Yeah, I clarified in a sibling comment, but that's basically what it comes down to.

I generally just don't think punishing people with the express purpose of making them suffer is a good thing. I think it's cruel, and I also don't think it actually works in regards to helping society long-term. The fact that it's sort of common knowledge that you'll be sexually assaulted in prison, and people seem bizarrely fine with that because "they deserve it" really disturbs me, for example.

In regards to SBF specifically, I'm not convinced he won't try and run a similar scam again; if not in the US, then in another country with less strict securities laws. He doesn't appear to have any remorse about what he's done, and blamed everyone but himself for everything.

I agree that we have no need for vengance against the criminal.

But the fact that SBF would do it again is not a case for vengance/punishment, but for deterrence. And, frankly, it's harder to launch your next scam while you're currently incarcerated.

I hear you saying "I don't want vengance, but…", but there's actually no contradiction there. You want deterrence and to prevent recidivism.

And merely taking all his money, and all his parents money, is not actually a deterrence. But that doesn't mean prison is vengence/punishment for punishment's sake.

> it's sort of common knowledge that you'll be sexually assaulted in prison

While a blasé attitude toward such abuse is certainly reprehensible, I don't think there's any support for the magnitude you describe.

Even the most dramatic statistics imply that prisoners are far more likely to not be assaulted.

Official numbers are like 2-5%, activist numbers are in the 20% range.

Anything greater than 0% is horrifying of course. Although FWIW I also checked official and activist numbers for non-incarcerated males and females in the US, and it's actually very similar.

(Never been in prison, never been a victim, never been a perpetrator, not in law enforcement, not an activist, don't know what I'm talking about, but wish the problem could be understood honestly and eliminated completely.)

I suppose that's what I get for relying on common knowledge.

If that 20% number is right, that's completely terrifying. A 1 in 5 shot being sexually assaulted is still very high, and when I have argued with people about prison reform, they seem wholly uninterested in fixing the problem.

> Giving more than (say) 20 years to most 20-year-old murderer is no different from 120, from either deterrence perspective. When they're 40 they'll be a different person

There was an interesting interview with Matt Cox (stole $55 million or so via mortgage fraud) where someone asked him what amount of prison time would have deterred him from re-offending (he got like 30 years originally).

He said anything above 5 actual years in prison (so like 8 sentenced years) and he was never breaking the law in a major way again. That losing such a length of time was not worth any amount of money to him, essentially.