re: The left keeps saying we cannot imprison our way out of crime.

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I can't deal

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Talk to your husband about it. Maybe he can calm you down.

I do commend you for at least putting out your beliefs

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1. It does not serve as a deterrent

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Short time served will never serve as a deterrent.

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2. It does not make for a safe environment for inmates (including the non-violent ones) or prison guards

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But having those people free makes the environment safer?
I do agree that violent and non violent criminals should be held separately.

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3. It does not produce anything of value or realize any opportunity to offset the cost of incarceration

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In 2024 alone, U.S. retailers lost an estimated $45 billion to shoplifting. Moreover, 91% of the retailers surveyed for a National Retail Federation report in 2024 said aggression tied to shoplifting has increased.

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https://www.ladarling.com/blog/human-economic-cost-retail-shrink/

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Burglary Recovery Rates
In 2024, the total value of stolen property across all theft categories reached nearly $23 billion, according to FBI data.

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https://www.safehome.org/resources/burglary-statistics/

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Over 1 million people were incarcerated as of December 2023, according to Bureau of Justice Statistics data. To house them, state governments spent a combined $63.6 billion.

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https://usafacts.org/articles/how-much-do-states-spend-on-prisons/
45+23=67>63.6

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1. It does make inmates more violent and better criminals for when they get released

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Studies do point out that criminals typically get more violent with time, no matter if they get away with it or are caught.
Most murderers have a rap sheet of prior crimes, even when those earlier crimes had non incarceration penalties.

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2. It does make for a more dangerous environment for guards and inmates

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Wait, so you want those dangerous people out in public?

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3. It does cost a lot of taxpayer money

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As I showed, criminals cost more in damages than incarceration.
It's why society is happy with removing them from society.

I really appreciate the next part.

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So what about the restorative theory? What if these inmates were trained to do something productive (or used skills they already had when they went in?)

And what if instead of living in a cage and spending all their time and bandwidth on surviving an incredibly violent environment and learning nothing more than how to become more violent themselves, what if those who were cooperative got to live in something like an actual human being would live in and go to work every day to pay back the people they victimized? I don't mean go to work outside the facility. I mean they got trained to do something useful inside the facility. Think remote jobs.

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I don't know where you and cubbies make up this idea that people in prison spend all their time trying to survive. I'd like to see some data on it, in a 1999 study, 20% of state prisoners were ever assaulted. While yes that number should be improved upon, that does mean 80% of prisoners have said they were never assaulted even once while in prison.
And yes, As I pointed out to Cubs that there are many programs for job training and education. I fully support them, and we need more of them.

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Can someone tell me what the downside of shifting to that type of theory of justice would be? The only thing I can think of is that some people wouldn't get the emotional satisfaction of seeing inmates suffer as much as possible.

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That's where we have been moving since the late 1800s.
I highly recommend you join and help Prison Fellowship.

I do think we need to keep first time offenders separate from long term incarcerations, non violent offenders from violent offenders.
But that takes more money and more support for the prison system.

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And before anybody tries, I'm not saying that everybody would be suitable for that type of program. I also believe in a protective theory of justice. If you have proven that you can't be free in society without hurting other people, then you can't be free. But none of these people would be free; they would still be incarcerated. The priority for their incarceration would simply be different. Instead of a useless priority of trying to maximize their suffering, it would be to maximize their usefulness to society.

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I do agree with much of this, the difference is that believe that we can continue to improve the criminal justice system, not call it evil and throw it out.
I really do question where you are getting data to support this law of the jungle prison idea.

Maybe some of the worst run prisons?

I do think we should continue to have prisoners perform labor, to offset the very high cost of their confinement, if some of that went to their victims I would be more than ok with it.

Add the threat of public executions to the list….and follow through!
Life in prison should =death in prison and not 20 years down the road

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Short time served will never serve as a deterrent.

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Neither do long sentences, which is what I specifically referred to. But you knew that.

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But having those people free makes the environment safer?

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Nope. Good thing I never said that, and in fact explicitly stated the opposite.

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In 2024 alone, U.S. retailers lost an estimated $45 billion to shoplifting.

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Um, o.k. So exactly what kind of sentence are you proposing for shoplifting?

We know that harsh sentences don't act as a deterrent, so the only way incarceration saves any of that money is by keeping people off the street. So how long? 20 years?

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Studies do point out that criminals typically get more violent with time

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Yes, they do. Which is why this:

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I don't know where you and cubbies make up this idea that people in prison spend all their time trying to survive.

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Is irrelevant. The point is not whether someone becomes more violent because they are assaulted daily or whether it's some other feature of the current model. The point is that the current model produces that result.

Just out of curiosity, you ever known anybody who was in prison and heard what life is like in prison from someone with first-hand experience? I have.

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As I showed, criminals cost more in damages than incarceration.

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You didn't show that at all. In fact, what you actually showed is that our current incarceration system costs an assload of money and STILL produces a society in which billions of dollars of financial harm are visited upon society.

That's the problem with attempting to set it up as an "either-or." We don't have either-or. We currently have both.

What you did is give a great example of how what we have now doesn't work. And the idea that, "It would work if we just did more of it" doesn't make sense in the context of the fact that the US already incarcerates more people per capita than almost every other country in the world.

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Wait, so you want those dangerous people out in public?

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Wait, no, and I said so clearly and explicitly. But again, you knew that.

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I do agree with much of this, the difference is that believe that we can continue to improve the criminal justice system, not call it evil and throw it out.

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Why are you being so intentionally obtuse and ignoring what I have actually said? I never said anything about throwing out the justice system. I sat here and posted several paragraphs about changing the priority of it. Nor did I ever call it evil.

If you want to have a discussion about things I've actually said, I'm willing to do that. But I'm not willing to entertain endless strawman nonsense.