Part of it is that society went bugnuts back in the late 60's/early 70's and "tough on crime" got a major boost, resulting in sentencing getting WAY harsher in the 80's and continuing to date with few reversals.
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Replying to @legalinspire @eigenrobot and
There is an article somewhere online about Joanne Chesimard and it mentions people shooting state troopers with shotguns and getting 2 months in jail in the 70's and citing it as an example of why harsh sentencing was imposed by Congress when the courts wouldn't do it.
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that seems like a less useful example because it is both reasonable and NOT at all what is mostly responsible for the exponential rise in incarcerated population (it's like 95% drug convictions)
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The mandatory sentencing stuff has many causes, but IMO it was a general feeling of lawlessness and people getting slaps on the wrist for serious crimes that motivated a lot of it.
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Replying to @legalinspire @danlistensto and
Then after that, toughen up the drug laws and boom, a felony's a felony and drug convictions are SO easy to get and so, so common. Violent crime has always been relatively rare, but trying to deal with it caught the drug dealers as well.
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a radical legal theory: you can't actually prevent violent crime through ANY legislative intervention at all. it's a fool's errand and causes extreme harm to impoverished communities. real remedies include improvements to economic opportunity especially internal migration.
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s/radical/silly FTFY In all seriousness, I see your point. I disagree with it as a core principle. People who really are violent need to be kept away from the rest of us. If we do that, they will not be able to commit violent crimes. Violent crime is therefore prevented.
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they've already committed at least one violent crime by that point. talking about prevention here.
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You don't think keeping people who are violent away from everybody would prevent violence? Man, tough crowd. I'm not talking about FutureCrime. You're right. We can't stop that, and the very idea of trying is terrifying.
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Replying to @legalinspire @danlistensto and
But there are people who do not commit violent crime because of the fear of punishment, and there are people who are prevented from committing further violent crimes because they are incarcerated after committing one. And they are not so rare as to be irrelevant here.
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deterrence suggests that that is a class of people who respond to incentives and can act rationally, so we're not talking about the worst kind of violent offenders and that is a category I would expect would respond very well to improved economic opportunity.
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Respectfully disagree.
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