Does that mean we can stop keeping mouth wash and deodorant behind lock and key on store shelves and resume locking up the criminals making messes of our cities?
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Locking up people for petty theft is almost certainly FAR more expensive than the cost of the materials being stolen. It costs tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars to house an inmate every year, to say nothing of the damage it causes that inmate. Prisons make criminals more likely to commit crime in the future.
A person would have to be stealing like 40 bottles of mouthwash every single day for it to be cheaper to jail an inmate rather than just replace the mouthwash for the business. Cases like that also clog the justice system and prevent solving more serious crimes, deplete shared resources like police and public defenders, and overcrowd prisons.
Even if you aren't a prison abolitionist like me, surely the rational approach here isn't "Pay more and increase the likelyhood the petty criminal becomes a serious criminal". It just makes zero rational sense to try and solve the issue that way.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cost-per-prisoner-in-us-sta...
Who pays matters.
Prisons make criminals more likely to commit crime in the future.
Your comment focuses on prison and the impact it has on a single criminal who is caught, convicted, and put in prison. Sometimes this is a useful way to look at things.
I think it's far more useful to consider prison's impact on all the people who are not in prison. It serves as a crime deterrent.
Here is a study supporting the assertion that prisons increase (or do not reduce) the likelihood of someone reoffending in the future. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/715100
Your claim that prisons reduce the likelihood of the population at large is not obvious on its face, as the US has very high rate of incarceration, but still has moderately high crime rates. Can you supply some data?
Your claim that prisons reduce the likelihood of the population at large is not obvious on its face
Here is a study supporting the assertion that prisons increase (or do not reduce) the likelihood of someone reoffending in the future
I'm saying that prison sentences are not a deterrent to crime, and, in fact, increase the amount of crime done. Research has consistently shown that the threat of being caught is considerably higher deterrent than prison time, and that harsh sentences don't influence behavior:
https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/five-things-about-deterr...
> That has nothing to do with the point I made, which was about people becoming criminals.
We are discussing crime. Which has a total sum. You can reduce that sum by preventing people from being criminals or you can reduce that sum by reforming criminals. I believe you need both. So it is important to remember that prisons negatively contribute to reforming people, increasing total crime, while research shows they don't contribute to preventing people from being criminals.
We need other systems, systems that prevent people from becoming criminals AND reduce the likelihood of re-offending if they do.
I'm saying that prison sentences are not a deterrent to crime, and, in fact, increase the amount of crime done. Research has consistently shown that the threat of being caught is considerably higher deterrent than prison time, and that harsh sentences don't influence behavior: