re: Societal question: Would you trade the crime of today vs 70s-90s?

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We have pointed out the flaws of your reasoning. You have yet to comment on it.

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You say that feeling more unsafe as incarceration rates rise doesn’t prove that incarceration doesn’t improve public safety because there may be no actual correlation between public safety and incarceration rates.

That’s also my point.

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In New Orleans there was at least a murder a day with over 400 in 1993. Today it's 125 (2005) and about the same in 2024 and had been trending that way for a while. It's the same in most big cities NYC had maybe 350 murders last year as compared to 2200 in 1990. Even Chicago has seen a decrease since the end of Covid. So you would rather be walking the streets in a city today as compared to the 1990s or 1980s.

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We also have half the population we did back then

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Rates

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We don’t care about rates or how unfair you think they are. We want more of these criminals serving long sentences. You can act ignorant all you want but it’s almost a nation wide epidemic at this point of people committing violent crimes while having already been convicted of previous felonies that should have them still in prison. Three strikes laws were smart and maybe too lenient.

Maybe crime is down because welfare is up?

Go back to welfare rates of 50 years ago and I’d bet you’d see a massive increase in violent crime.

Also I’d imagine more people spend far less time outside with other people.

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You say that feeling more unsafe as incarceration rates rise doesn’t prove that incarceration doesn’t improve public safety because there may be no actual correlation between public safety and incarceration rates. That’s also my point.

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A bad man in jail can’t do shite to harm an innocent. You want them given chance after chance. Blood is on your hands.

Mmmmm.we have about 3/4 of the population of 1990. So using your logic NOLA should be at 300 murders but it's still at 125 so it's at half of your expectation .....using your own justifications for your paranoia

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What specific comment do you find so offensively egregious?

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The ones you already deflected from once.

Also, I didn't say offensive. I said egregiously fallacious.

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Wellll that’s just factually wrong and one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen posted. If the criminal is incarcerated then he can’t commit the crime

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First of all, criminals can still commit crimes while incarcerated, and not just crimes against other incarcerated inmates. They can commit crimes against guards/staff and (more rare) visitors, and they can commit crimes against people on the outside by proxy (and conspiracy is a crime).

Second of all, even if that were true, it would only be true while the inmate was incarcerated.

Now, I don't know what effect incarceration has on the overall rate of crime, but I can very easily see that there is at least a possibility that it could be a wash. Here's why:

Our current system facilitates criminals becoming more hardened and learned criminals while inside so that when they get out they are even more violent and likely to re-offend. It's like higher education for criminals.

The more people you funnel into that system, the more come out on the other end ready to commit even more crimes.

And the TD macho ridiculous nonsense of, "If they steal more than a pack of bubble gum, send them to the electric chair," may make some people feel better, but that's never going to happen.

It's not. Y'all might as well accept it. And incarcerating people for longer and longer periods of time and building more prisons and having to employ more and more people to guard them 24 hours a day and feed them and provide medical care for them is heinously expensive. Especially when they are older and the longer they say in prison, the older they get, obviously.

AI estimated that a prisoner might cost as much as 20 times as many taxpayer dollars as the same guy living free on welfare. Nope, not going to happen. We're not going to start executing people just because we don't want to pay to incarcerate them, so don't even post it. You'd be wasting everybody's time, because it will not happen.

So those of you who scream about the Joos and spending money in Iran and people on welfare and fraud and the debt might be interested to know that building one additional prison costs roughly a billion dollars. The Pentagon reported to Congress last month that the Iran war has cost $25 billion so far.

That's not even one additional prison per state.

I believe in a protective theory of incarceration. I don't want people who are dangerous out in public either. But our current system is so inefficient and stone aged it would behoove us to at least try to improve the results while streamlining the process. To not even try is just stupid, because the way we do this right now is really 'effing expensive.

What is your alternative? Explain.