I'd offer the alternative of we don't adequately punish our violent people. We disbanded asylums and pushed the needy onto the streets (I acknowledge the trope of horror/insane-asylum is a real thing and counter with there were good ones and bad ones, proper oversight is necessary), glorified violence, ignored re-offenders, and so on. There is no justice -- not in the real sense of the word -- and so there is effectively no law.

We have a very high incarceration rate and our penalties for convicted felons tend to be quite high in comparison to European countries. When you talk about not adequately punishing violent people are you talking about violent crimes in which police to do not make an arrest?

This is an incredibly complex topic, and I apologize for speaking of it so simply in GP.

The justice system in the United States is broken in many, many places. And the issues that spawn from a broken justice system leak into every other facet of life.

I could talk about privately owned prisons that are incentivized to keep bodies in cells (that's how they get compensated). I could talk about the judges that are bribed to ensure these prisons get filled.

We could move on to things like jail-time for minor drug offenses. Is this a DA problem? Or a policing problem? I'm not sure.

Or, conversely, violent criminals who get their jail time commuted. This is a judge and DA problem.

Or, continuing, the definition of "felon" in the United States is a byzantine thing. See [0].

Our laws are too jumbled and onerous. Justice, the ideal, is not sought nor executed in many cases. I don't know how to fix this. A part of me wants to burn two centuries of case law and go back to a bare Constitution, with an emphasis on personal conduct and responsibility (those darn Puritans were on to something). But that's too simple. We're caught in a trap, and I honestly don't see a way out.

There's a quote that comes to mind "representative rule only works when the people are moral". Something like that. Are we moral?

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp...

I agree with your point. Thank you for the clarification.

It's not about punishment, it's about prevention

Part of prevention is adequate punishment. Deterrence works.

Yes and no. It's more nuanced than that.

"crimes involving conscious planning can be more easily deterred than those that relate to addiction or sudden emotions;

increases to prison sentences that are already lengthy have little deterrent effect; and

policies that increase the likelihood of being caught deter crime more effectively than those that increase punishment. "

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...

> SF had 40 murders per 100,000 people [last year]

No it didn't. It had 56 murders [1] and a population of 808,437, so 6.9 murders per 100k [2], vs London's rate of 1.42 murders per 100k.

[1] https://sfist.com/2023/01/03/sf-sees-exact-same-number-of-ho...

[2] https://sfstandard.com/research-data/san-francisco-bay-area-...

According to the FBI webpage you linked to it was 40 murders and non negligent manslaughters per 100,000 people in SF. I don’t know the nuances of the definitions involved so maybe the non negligent manslaughter portion is what causes the disparity in the stats cited.

Still, the low murder rate, by American standards, in SF is almost 5 times higher than London’s.

No it wasn't -- you're misreading "number of murders" as "murder rate per 100,000 people."

I did misread it! I had to reread it twice because I would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that the column label said “per 100,000”.