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Comment by PaulDavisThe1st | Hacker News Reader

we incarcerate at a higher rate per capita, not just in absolute numbers. based on your apparent view of things, that ought to result in less crime per capita, but it does not.

> more or less stringent about jailing criminals

is quite different than "fill the jails, empty the jails"

Quite a bit of research on the effect of deterrence on crime seems to strongly suggest that it is the level of certainty of being caught and punished that has a deterrent effect, not the severity of the sentence. This would correlate with "more or less stringent about jailing criminals".

> the primary purpose of jail is not rehabilitation, it is to protect the public from criminals

This is a statement of belief, and there are people who believe otherwise. I don't have a strong position either way, but I don't like people asserting that their opinions are self-obvious truths about the world.

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Independent of any discussion on deterrence or incarceration's purpose, I think you misinterpret parent point as being about absolute numbers, but I read their point as per capita crime rates being higher, and thus per capita incarceration rates are as well being downstream of a population committing higher per capita offenses.

America has measurably larger underclass than, say, EU measurable in absolute and per capita terms across metrics like offense rates, incarcerations, income equality, education...

If incarceration is always "downstream" of per-capita crime rates, then it presumably has little effect on the upstream causes of crime.

And yes, the US has a larger underclass than the EU, which just might have something to do with why we have more crime, no? And if so, increasing incarceration rates is not likely to help much, is it?

I think I see where the discussion frequently diverges on these threads - you're pointing out that incarceration does not appear to decrease offenses, while myself and others are pointing out why more incarceration is an outcome (desired, if we're being opinionated) of more offenses.

I think you're onto something in calling your point out, but at the same time, it's daring commenters to ask you what any society's response to crimes should be.

Rather than be coy, I'll stick my neck out and claim incarceration is about optimizing for outcomes among the peaceful/orderly middle and higher classes. We don't have to worry about the philosophical question of why crime occurs, or whether incarceration will work overall, it works well enough to deflect crimes away from certain locally policed areas and demographics and that flawed approach is good enough to keep the unkind, leaky system going.

> incarceration is about optimizing for outcomes among the peaceful/orderly middle and higher classes.

Actually I focus more on protecting the peaceful/orderly poor. Poor people are overwhelmingly law-abiding, but they suffer from the overwhelming majority of crime. On the other hand it's mostly naive rich people who subscribe to these theories that put the blame on everyone except the criminal, and they most of all can afford to insulate themselves from the predictable chaos when those theories are put into practice. Poor people don't have that luxury.

The comment you replied to is talking about incapacitation, not deterrence.

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