So we should let Gary Ridgway out?

You left out the part where the likelihood of punishment has a much higher measurable deterrent effect than the severity of punishment.

This makes a good case for locking up up repeat violent offenders at least into their 40s. Agree on non-violent ones tho- we need a better idea than prison. As to Ridgeway, he should have been released through a trap door some time ago.

@dvs99

@dvs99 I know, right? How is this guy a lawyer? He says "it's a myth that long sentences keep the public safe," but then follows it up by saying "it's proven that long sentences for juveniles almost eliminate the chance of re-offending when you get out, and for the most crime-prone people, you can just put them in prison time-out until they're 40 and you're fine."

"Consequently, society would be better served by addressing crime’s root causes, such as early childhood trauma, mental illness, economic insecurity, and violence."

These are intractable issues that have been around as long as there have been humans living together. I'm sorry and I fully recognize that incarcerating someone will not solve their issues but at some point if we find out that someone is incapable of being part of the social contract either by choice or by things out of their control (like mental illness) than for their good and the good of everyone else we need to place them somewhere they can not do further harm. What is left unsaid in this op ed is that if we continue to let these folks out of jail there will be additional victims and the rest of us just need to accept that. That's a non starter for me. To quote Spock "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one".

@2 likelihood of being caught, but yes.

@5 way to conspicuously misunderstand that statistic. People RELEASED EARLY, so in other words who did NOT serve the sentence imposed, have a miniscule recidivism rate. Indicating the long sentences imposed were entirely unnecessary and unwarranted.

Bullshit. Long prison sentences aren't about "survivors healing," they are about removing the perpetrator from society because they chose to not abide by society's rules. You break the rules, you sit it out for a while. You break the rules real bad, you sit out for a long time (maybe for the rest of your life).

But sure, argue that Charles Manson should have been let out of prison. Or Ted Bundy. Please... go on with your "restorative justice" b.s.

Prisons have been around for thousands of years... know why? Because there are shitty human beings that don't want to follow society's norms. People who will always want to bring harm. And those shitty human beings need to "sit it out" for a while. That will never change. Which means all this restorative justice bullshit is exactly that - performative bullshit.

@8 by all means don't let having embarrassingly misunderstood the argument deter you from continuing to push your ill-informed and close-minded opinions

The article isn't specific; what kind of crimes are we talking about? And .. the writer says that the survivors don't care about it? That's not true. Fo example, I knew a woman who was brutally abducted and raped, and he was being released back into the community -- another state. She was informed about it and terrified. And you know what happened after they released him? He abducted and raped another woman, and the other woman, he also murdered.

@10 He was white.