I wonder how many people actually understood what the article is referring to when it says "increased incarceration". It's not referring to increased jail sentences for those who commit violent times. It's referring to the imprisoning of non-violent "criminals" such as marijuana dealers.
> "Higher incarceration rates are not associated with lower violent crime rates, because expanding incarceration primarily means that more people convicted of nonviolent, "marginal" offenses (like drug offenses and low-level property offenses) and "infrequent" offenses are imprisoned."
I'm all for legalizing marijuana and other soft drugs, but not for going easy on rapists and murderers. Do increased jail sentences have a deterrent effect? A quick Google search shows that the answer is yes, up to a certain point, and this makes perfect logical sense. If the punishment for committing armed robbery consisted solely of one day in prison, so many more people would give it a go. As you increase the sentence from one day to multiple years, you would weed out the less hardcore would-be criminals.
We can debate the inflection point where the effects start to taper off. But there is no doubt that having some threat of jail time, has a extremely significant impact on crime.
> "Higher incarceration rates are not associated with lower violent crime rates, because expanding incarceration primarily means that more people convicted of nonviolent, "marginal" offenses (like drug offenses and low-level property offenses) and "infrequent" offenses are imprisoned."
I'm all for legalizing marijuana and other soft drugs, but not for going easy on rapists and murderers. Do increased jail sentences have a deterrent effect? A quick Google search shows that the answer is yes, up to a certain point, and this makes perfect logical sense. If the punishment for committing armed robbery consisted solely of one day in prison, so many more people would give it a go. As you increase the sentence from one day to multiple years, you would weed out the less hardcore would-be criminals.
We can debate the inflection point where the effects start to taper off. But there is no doubt that having some threat of jail time, has a extremely significant impact on crime.
https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2016/03/29/longer-ja...