2.) The U.S. is not a monolith, so looking at the prison population of the United States as a whole doesn’t tell you about what’s going on in an individual state or city.

3.) The number of people incarcerated has a long tail. In the U.S. in particular, many people received long sentences during the years following the ‘94 crime bill. Little if any effort is being made to commute these despite policies centered on new incarceration changing.

4.) In the places where reduced incarceration is being tried in the U.S. it’s important to recognize that it’s being tried effectively in a vacuum. In many other places which are able to sustain low incarceration rates, there are a lot of social programs that help make that possible, and also programs to help people rehabilitate after a conviction. The U.S. has little if any of that. Where reduced incarceration is being tried, it’s usually not replaced with something that’s more effective.

So yes, while drugs should be deillegalized and those crimes expunged, this is only but a first step on a long road to repairing the severe damage that was done to law and order by the very people fallaciously rallying behind "law and order" in the 80's and 90's.

>a totalitarian state controlled by a political police force that secretly supervises the citizens' activities

Can you explain how the US is all of those things?

don't know about amd.... * slaps knee *

Basically every step of the way, whenever some sort of reform comes up they fight it tooth and nail while simultaneously grabbing every bit of extra power that they can.

These powers include things like surveillance and literal highway robbery in the form of civil forfeiture. In the way of surveillance, they can now purchase peoples data and there are companies selling services to police which analyze and track citizens movements without a warrant. Combine this with a story I saw on HN earlier today about a company purchasing live footage feeds from citizen surveillance cameras for cops to, again without a warrant, use at will.

But wait, there's more!

There are also electronic communications surveillance programs such as prism (NSA) and hemisphere (DEA) combined with the magic of parallel construction to obfuscate the fact that any surveillance was even used to spy on citizens illegally.

Cops basically get to do whatever they want without any sort of punishment when they do harm to citizens, which they do regularly including murdering innocent ones. Perhaps you've heard of the LASD gangs that terrorize the communities they're supposed to be protecting? It's well documented and has been going on for years, it still is.

Prosecutors and judges generally side with the cops because they need them to do their jobs, they have undue influence not only over prosecution but also legislation in the form of strikes and union lobbying.

Police unions are probably the only union I think should be dismantled, all other unions for workers are great but police unions are actively harmful to society.

There is a lot that can be done about the quality of policing in this country but we are really far off a police state. We are simply a state with an incompetent perpetually afraid power hungry police, likely due to the prevalence of guns. It's tragic as is.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Maybe you aren't the target now but who's to say you won't be in the future? Consider your perspective versus those who live in predominantly Black communities

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...

Of course there are different degrees, and throwing out these characterizations in a thread about even more totalitarian societies would be inappropriate whataboutism. But as domestic societal critique they do have some truth.

That being said consumption of alcohol and drugs are not victimless. The beated wife, the ignored children. Sons growing up with father figure with no drive to self improvement. Therefore, I wouldn't mind rolling back a lot of the alcohol liberalization of the past few decades.

Ultimately the reason we consider some things natural rights isn't to create some prescriptive model for the shape of an enlightened society. Rather it's due to the inevitable ugliness when the government attempts to legislate into individual autonomy, and people react en masse. And the results of the "drug war" have most certainly been quite ugly!

Drug Offenses are nearly half the prison population [1]. So the prison population can decrease by significant amounts without releasing any violent criminals.

[1]: https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offen...

this is not true. your data is federal only. most prisoners are at state prisons. drug offense is about 1/5 of total.

source https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2023.html

And is imprisoning people who are smuggling/distributing hard and potentially very dangerous drugs really that controversial?

i was just stating the fact that the initial number posted was wrong/incomplete.

Worse still you call yourself a liberal when in Europe you'd probably be a centrist moderate.

You aren't liberal, America's just massively skewed facist right now so you think you are.

Don't get me wrong, nothing wrong with a moderate, but a liberal wouldn't be calling for more imprisonment, they'd be calling for better recidivism.

It can ruin the victims life just as much as non-lethal violence (taking away a person's source of income, or transport required to keep a job, or wrecking a business they've spent many years building), but many take the 'it's only property, it's probably insured!' attitude.

And many at least see stealing from 'big nasty corporations' as relatively OK. But if people keep stealing from businesses until they close down or relocate and there's no easy shoplifting targets, will the thieves stop, or will they move on to stealing from homes?

I wonder why insurance is so high...

The problem isn’t just insurance. It’s that prosecution is insanely slow and is far more harmful to society than the actual crime.

I doubt the victims see it that way. If we just let people steal, it can turn into a runaway chain reaction due to a lack of consequences.

If people work for my living and see someone just steal for theirs with absolutely no consequence, what they learn is that social dysfunction is optimal, and that doing otherwise is being a chump.

Now, I do agree in a parallel way, but with a different solution. If we fix structural problems preventing people from being, or having hope of being, productive members of society, than that can prevent some crime.

"mere hundreds of dollars"

This is incredibly insensitive. That's a lot of money to lose to many people.

Insurance increases the expected cost of loss! -- the insurer would go broke if they were charging less than that.

So yeah, sure, it can save you from the boundary effect of it instantly wreaking your life but only by putting you at a constant disadvantage to people who live in less crime prone areas or whom are wealthy enough to self insure against such loss.

People who say this don't have real jobs; not the type of jobs where they'll end up on pain killers when they retire. They have laptop jobs on the softer side of intellectual rigor.

Money is time traded from your life, health traded from your body to your employer. Stealing property is literally stealing the purpose of hours of grueling work.

The liberal position—don’t make relatively harmless stuff illegal—is one way to reduce the amount of crime.

Sure, lock up people who do violent crimes (I mean, get them out of society while we try to figure out if we can get them psychological help), but instead of doing something dystopian like tent prison cities, just let out the people who shouldn’t be there in the first place.

(All that is to say, I agree with you, just think we should focus on the part that will benefit society).

In the past year I've seen different people claim that hemp consumption, property crime, and even intimidation with a firearm were nonviolent and that their perpetrators were merely marginalized individuals who need social assistance rather than prosecution.

I think GP's point is that even property crime is not victimless: It hurts everyone, it makes society worse, and it likely hurts the people at the bottom of society disproportionately.

But I may add, then, that the reformers have the burden of showing evidence for their position: they need to demonstrate that it is possible to have a low-crime, low-prosecution, high social net city somewhere in the US. I'm beginning to suspect that they are missing some critical component which is required to make such a system work for everyone.

> ... property crime is not victimless: It hurts everyone ...

"victimless" and "hurts everyone" are both at the two extreme, opposite ends of a spectrum.

It's fairly likely some of the property crimes occurring could be somewhere in the middle.

Genuine question; is that only physically? If I like causing people pain and anguish and suffering, and my weapon of choice is words, should I also be incarcerated because I hurt people intentionally? I tend towards not giving people a free pass simply because their weapon of choice is words, but (amongst other things) the US has a reputation for being very permissive with the spoken word.

I think there is a massive difference between physical violence (and property crime) and words. What sort of words are you envisioning here?

No, you shouldn't be incarcerated for that. You would be an asshole if you intentionally caused people anguish with your words, but being an asshole is not a crime (and shouldn't be).

No, it isn't. It's the opinion of a single person, and you're taking it for granted that their comment was made in earnest and that they truly represent 'the American view' -- whatever that is.

>So those outside the US can get insights into what the US is and how it thinks from threads like this.

No, they can't. They can learn about the opinion of a single person.

Can you point me to a country with such a unified opinion that any single person can cover the opinions of the entire populous?

If not, why would you assume that such a case may exist for the United States?

And more to the point, the premise was that it is ridiculous to hold the manufacturer of stolen goods to be wholly responsible for the theft in a jurisdiction that has law enforcement -- do you disagree with that, or do you just care to make an example out of someone?

What? No. This is not remotely a universal American viewpoint -- especially the government being "on the side of the criminals etc." What would that even mean?

It would look, and maybe this is sheer coincidence, very much like our present situation

I imagine that people would gesture at stories like this:

https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/suspect...

> Police arrested one of two gun-wielding people caught on camera during a double shooting at a crowded holiday celebration this past weekend in south St. Louis, but the 33-year-old woman was released Wednesday afternoon after the prosecutor’s office refused charges against her.

> The suspect’s release drew public ire, but Circuit Attorney Kimberly M. Gardner’s office declined to further explain.

Here's Alvin Bragg, talking about no longer charging certain crimes at all:

https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/06/us/alvin-bragg-manhattan-dist...

Here's George Gascon doing the same in LA:

https://abc7.com/george-gascon-los-angeles-district-attorney...

If you prefer specific cases, here are some lawyers who were facing domestic terrorism charges for firebombing a police car. They had already plead guilty. They were given a new, lesser plea deal:

https://jonathanturley.org/2022/06/05/new-york-attorneys-acc...

I can find a lot more individual cases. For example, the Zimminskis who may only have been prosecuted because Binger was called to account for that during trial. They managed to get arrested for multiple other crimes, including a kidnapping, while on bail.

FWIW, the parent poster doesn't want increased incarceration, they want these people executed (probably without due process).

that isn't just wrong -- it's not even what parent said.

Their hyperbole was pointing out that the perceived situation is so bad that it would take something drastic to turn it around, not that they in anyway wanted or desired it.

There is a lot of purposeful misinterpretation/mis-reading going on in this thread, it seems.

Both are hyperbole, but that is indeed what was said and implied. Defend it as rhetoric, don't gaslight it as a purposeful misreading.

You're right about the comparatively huge US prison population, but the difference is NOT because other countries let violent people and thieves roam free!

People who use extreme violence against other people are deranged. It's a mental health issue. In other countries, it's limited and so the heuristic is to just lock these people up in some place called prison. In the US it's endemic making it difficult to control no matter how many people you are incarcerating.

- higher rates of bad/no parenting

- schools with no ability to deal with bad behavior

This leads to young adults who think they can get away with anything?

Baltimore is one of the worst places I’ve visited for work. Everyone in the office told us visitors to stay on the main streets in downtown.

Baltimore City, MD - Single-Parent Households with Children as a Percentage of Households with Children (5-year estimate) in Baltimore city, MD was 57.45%

I’m sure there are plenty of good single parents out there, but a lot of these kids aren’t getting a good foundation for life?

I know many teachers, and I frequently hear how behavior at schools is the worst they’ve ever seen. It seems like it’s only getting worse.

Many places in the U.S. allow a certain level of criminality, which not only encourages criminal behavior, but means the people involved only face consequences when they do something truly horrendous that brings a long sentence. Let a teenager walk free when they steal cars, and they end up killing the next person they steal a car from (happened here recently). Never charge a stalker when he assaults his stalking victim multiple times while on probation, and he eventually kills her (also happened here recently). Let someone simply walk away from the court after being convicted of an armed robbery, and they'll eventually murder an innocent (again - happened here recently).

It can take years to undo this. We started moving in the right direction - cracked down on crime, brought the crime rates down, which started bringing down the incarceration rate. But then people got impatient and wanted undo everything, with many big promises that never materialized. Now crime rates are up, and we're probably going to end up with more incarceration.

Many other countries have lower incarceration stats. But in my experience, the people in those countries are often shocked when they learn that in nice neighborhoods of the U.S., large groups of men can walk into a store in the middle of the day, openly fill up bags of stolen merchandise in front of everyone, and simply walk out with no consequences. The base level of crime that's accepted in many places in the U.S. is simply much higher than in many other countries.

It was wrong when we did the same here in the USA with Japanese Americans (George Takei wrote about his time there) and we should not normalize this mass imprisonment without individual right to fair trial.

Edit: spelling

The US is a massive area of land with a variety of different regional geographic and cultural differences. You wouldn't go about describing Europe or an entire continent with equally broad strokes. It helps to be as specific as possible to advance the discussion.

*: Yes, stupid. https://youtu.be/ww47bR86wSc

The 13th amendment is federal and applies everywhere in the US. Not every state takes full advantage of prison slave labor, sure, but it is legal everywhere, and some do.

Except its not; the 13th amendment allows, and several states have institutionalized, involuntary servitude of prisoners.

> I agree they should be paid more though.

In addition to not always being voluntary, it is also not always paid at all.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Most organisations worldwide, are openly anti-communist, except those that explicitly support dictatorship and human rights abuse.

I guess that's a good thing.

I don't understand why Americans still cling to this villain. It's 2023, the USSR collapsed 30 years ago.

https://www.state.gov/the-united-states-vietnam-relationship...

So communism clearly isn’t the issue.

> China's long-term dependence on executed prisoners as organ donors will end at the start of next year, according to a high-ranking official.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2014-12/05/content_190287...

My understanding is the debates are over whether or not it still happens and to what extent political prisoners (particularly Falun Gong members) were victims.

Just because China calls everything it dislikes “propaganda” doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarce...

If China is too different, look at western Europe. England's incarceration rate is less than one third of the US's. Canada is on sixth of the US's. These countries have lower incarceration rates but less crime.

"Why do you love criminals and want innocent families to be terrorized and executed by criminals?"

Incarcerating criminals isn't the issue, having so many criminals is the issue.

Is it because most of the violent crimes are related to drug addiction?

Salvador was overrun with gang violence, a new government came in, rounded up the gangsters and crime has gone down. On balance the population of Salvador is better off.

"'The Department of Justice conducted a thorough investigation of Alabama’s prisons for men and determined that Alabama violated and is continuing to violate the Constitution because its prisons are riddled with prisoner-on-prisoner and guard-on-prisoner violence. The violations have led to homicides, rapes, and serious injuries.'"

This is not a system that is going to successfully reintegrate people. We owe a basic level of humane treatment even to prisoners, if not for the sake of liberal values than for the pragmatic reason that violent people who are put in an environment which encourages further violence will remain violent people when they are released back into our society.

Ukraine: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/08/ukraine-four-...

Mexico: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/mexicos-federal-prisons-a-...

Spain: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-77231-8_...

Brazil: https://www.americasquarterly.org/article/qa-why-is-prison-v...

And in Paradise (I mean Cuba): https://democraticspaces.com/trending/2022/3/29/prisoners-de...

Etc...

And since you linked Amnesty, here’s their report on solitary confinement at ADX Florence: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2014/07/usa-prisoners...

At the same time, I wish to point out most other prison systems in the world are similar or worse and suspects before they become prisoners have fewer legal rights afforded them.

That said, the catch-and-release as well as the watch-and-do-nothing approach we're seeing in some places are aggravating crime and they are not doing anyone any favors, the criminals or the victims.

This might be true but I do not think it’s true of most peer countries (Western Europe, Canada, etc). I do believe that US prisons are among the least humane of this group as well as the least effective at rehabilitation. Again, this is not to say that those other systems do not have problems, just that the severity of the worst abuses and the extent of abuse in general is worse here.

> Prisoner rehabilitation does not work, says former prisons boss

> Sir Martin Narey says focus should be on treating inmates with decency and dignity

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/oct/29/prisoner-reh...

> So far, prison inmate rehab isn’t working

> California’s prisons are supposed to be rehabilitating inmates, not merely warehousing them, but a new report from the state auditor says it’s not effectively reducing recidivism among those released from the system.

https://calmatters.org/commentary/2019/02/so-far-prison-inma...

There is a certain political faction that has developed the habit of observing the effects of jail on criminals while ignoring the effect of criminals on the innocent. I think the parent is reacting to the disingenuousness of this position.

US views criminals a people who failed the society, while at this numbers it would be way more reasonable to see them as people failed by the society.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_offences_in_China

So it's probably fair enough to compare incarceration rates and numbers.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_China#Ra...

> The exact numbers of people executed in China is classified as a state secret;

In addition to executions, China has been clamping down on entire populations, therefore, preventing future incarceration.

> Uyghur birthrate fell by almost half between 2017-2019, research finds, adding to evidence of coercive fertility policies

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/12/chinese-uyghur...

The GP comment is pushing a certain narrative that (in my view) has been ginned up by reactionary groups for their own ends.

In addition, it's wrong on the facts (insofar as it makes any fact-based claims versus just pushing buttons).

I'll go farther. I scoff most profoundly at the viewpoint of the GP post. I view people pushing it as low-information and politically naive (if they actually believe it) or evil and opportunistic (if they are just "intensifying the contradictions" for their own reactionary ends).

I lived in Vancouver in Canada, that is true there too, Seattle is the same (the CHAZ bs a couple years ago? 3rd avenue in Downtown?). Hell, in Argentina is also the same and that's south america. I think this is more a problem of places with left leaning politics which consider criminals victims of society which means that they can't be held responsible by their actions. Meanwhile, everyone else suffers.

No, everyone outside of your head can get insights into your willingness to cherrypick a single comment and extrapolate to fit your pessimistic, hyper-critical mental model.

It's also interesting how you talk about incarceration rates independently of crime rates, and act as if the US is prosecuting and incarcerating broad swathes of innocent people. For those of us who have had loved ones murdered or assaulted, or been mugged/beaten, we don't have the luxury of thinking of this in an abstract way fitting a bong rip session in a dorm room. Take off the Che Guevara t-shirt, take a walk outside, and realize that the world isn't a neat little theory straight from a professor being interviewed on Democracy Now!.

There's about half a million people in jail right now who haven't been convicted of a crime. Some of them are innocent, for sure.

How often is that, exactly?

> This tendency to lie pervades all police work, not just high-profile violence, and it has the power to ruin lives. Law enforcement officers lie so frequently—in affidavits, on post-incident paperwork, on the witness stand—that officers have coined a word for it: testilying. Judges and juries generally trust police officers, especially in the absence of footage disproving their testimony. As courts reopen and convene juries, many of the same officers now confronting protesters in the street will get back on the stand.

> Defense attorneys around the country believe the practice is ubiquitous; while that belief might seem self-serving, it is borne out by footage captured on smartphones and surveillance cameras. Yet those best positioned to crack down on testilying, police chiefs and prosecutors, have done little or nothing to stop it in most of the country. Prosecutors rely on officer testimony, true or not, to secure convictions, and merely acknowledging the problem would require the government to admit that there is almost never real punishment for police perjury.

Police and DAs, the parties who do most of the investigating of police perjury, are not exactly eager to share their internal findings for reasons we can probably guess, but the article does offer one striking anecdote:

> One NYPD officer, David Grieco—commonly known as Bullethead—has been sued at least 32 times, costing the city $343,252, for civil rights violations, including excessive force and fabrication of evidence. Yet Grieco was promoted and prosecutors continued to call him to the stand long after a slew of his victims blew the whistle on his violent and lawless behavior. Judges continued to rely on his word to lock up defendants. And Grieco’s name did not appear on Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez’s long-secret list of officers with known credibility problems.

Police lie during questioning as a tactic.

Selectively enforcing crimes is very common

Also, please don't use HN for ideological battle, regardless of what you're battling for or against. It looks like you've been doing that a lot, unfortunately. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

My layman belief is that this isn’t just a law and order issue. Its a cultural dysfunction.

The criminal is excused because he doesn't know any better, those that defend themselves are punished to the fullest extent because it's politically expedient to do so.

2. Comparison with China is not accurate. a) Can't trust numbers from China and b) China has a much more rigid social structure and rules and the population has been beaten in submission (e.g. make pie Tiananmen square). Imagine a visa system that prevents folks from California from migrating to Texas (we are even for allowing mass migration from outside).

Even Politifact rates such comparisons false https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2014/dec/16/matthew-co...

It is better looking at a local level. And here China exceeds the US. https://apnews.com/article/china-prisons-uyghurs-religion-0d...

3) If this is really not a problem with Baltimore (as you imply), other locations with Kias and Hyundias should also be suing them. As far as I know, they are also sold in China but don't have these issues.

California has 39mil inhabitants, currently has 97k in prison.

Germany has 83mil inhabitants, currently 56k in prison.

Most Americans are only presented with increasing incarceration rates as the only realistically viable way of solving most social ills. As such, there are many flavors and colors of “increase the incarceration rate” across the political spectrum, and lots of people will pick a boogeyman (drug addicts, thieves, etc.) to justify it. For those that don’t pick a boogeyman their support of increasing the incarceration rate is tied to something entirely unrelated (e.g. “My guy that supports mass incarceration is so much better than your guy that supports mass incarceration! Look at his track record on {social issue}!”)

The fact that this is the view shared by the majority is reflected in the barely-fluctuating incarceration rate and military-sized “crime fighting” budgets. It is also a fact that is reflected in who Americans continue to elect and which policies we vote to enact.

- don't understand the origin of crime

- own stock in those private companies that run prisons (capitalism at its worse)

The US is ofcourse rich enough to do it but that would require scrapping every single tax cut since Reagan. Which would inconvenience those in the upper strata of society.

This is an apple & orange measure. Starting from first principles, that is how people behave in society, we can at least temper superficial reading of bare metrics.

Human beings self police under surveillance. This is the entire point of setting up surveillance states. US in contrast tends more towards police state: show of force to partition society in distinct 'social climates', directly informed by economic means.

So, yes, a police state will attempt to partition, even to the extremity of incarceration, and a surveillance state (which is a super-set of police-state) applies psychological force and thus has a much reduced subset that it will deem 'problematic'. Ideally, a state like China will like to approach the limit of having every 'citizen' well trained and well behaved, as domesticated humans.

Our problem over here is (given a generous disposition) that we struggle with reconciling freedom and order without resorting to brainwashing the population, or (less generously) that structural characteristic of our system where "freedom" is bound with at times grotesque wealth disparities naturally creates social hostility, and the economic incentives of a criminal life.

The problem with the USA’s prison system is that it doesn’t focus on rehabilitation at all and instead focuses on punishment. We get the exact results expected of such a system, which is a lot of repeat business.

There were very few long term prisoners in medieval society, not because of a progressive outlook but because most crimes were punished with some form of torture, execution, or both. Also, many things were crimes that now are thought of as basic human rights. You can have small prison population if your are willing to truly brutalize your population.

China performs about half of the execution in the world every year, is known to torture dissidents, and I doubt it reports those being re-educated as prisoners. I would hardly consider that more just than America.

A society can also have a small inmate population and be unjust because enforcement is rare, or selective either due to corrupt or ineffective law enforcement. Additionally if acts of vigilantism are common in a society you can have also have less prisoners since "justice" is found in the streets.

I think there are reasonable critiques of the American prisons, criminal justice system, and especially for profit prisons, but there are also much worse alternatives. The system we have really is an imperfect attempt in need of adjustment and not a deliberate attempt at cruelty. The cruelty is a bug not the feature.

The more crime, the more criminals. The more criminals, the more prisoners.

The tired trope that the US incarcerates so many non-violent criminals is just that, a trope. It's not based in reality. You could let out every single non-trafficking drug offense today and you wouldn't make a noticeable dent in the prison population at all. Drop that down to all non-violent offenses and it's not much better. At this point it's an outright lie when people bring this topic up, it's not simply being misinformed any longer.

The fact is US society is far more violent than many others it's compared to. There are many reasons that should be addressed, but we certainly do not have a problem of over incarceration of habitually violent criminals. Quite the opposite in fact. A very small percentage of people are responsible for the vast majority of the crime, and as a society we simply stopped caring bout their victims and let them roam free after dozens of interactions with law enforcement.

Then you have someone who is generally a decent citizen who makes a mistake and gets the entire book thrown at them - since they have something to lose and it's not politically dangerous.

This is a problem in the US. Hand-waving it away as saying American's simply want to jail everyone is silly. Live in some of these urban neighborhoods and tell me with a straight face you don't want more people in prison. You will be astounded at the people left to simply walk the streets and terrorize others. Literally everyone in the community knows who they are but nothing at all is done about it.

Speaking of tired tropes...

> Live in some of these urban neighborhoods and tell me with a straight face you don't want more people in prison.

Since you asked, I've lived in Dallas, Baltimore and the Detroit metro. I can tell you with a straight face I don't want more people in prison.

>You will be astounded at the people left to simply walk the streets and terrorize others.

It's more like you will be astounded at how dramatized this is, you will not be terrorized walking down the street.

> It's not based in reality. You could let out every single non-trafficking drug offense today and you wouldn't make a noticeable dent in the prison population at all. Drop that down to all non-violent offenses and it's not much better. At this point it's an outright lie when people bring this topic up, it's not simply being misinformed any longer.

Source?

Homicide and incarceration rates per 100k people:

         homicide | incarceration | incarceration/homicide
  USA         6.4 |           505 |                     79
  China       0.5 |           119 |                    238
  Norway      0.6 |            55 |                     92

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...