Appealing to "Dr" Pryor doesn't cut it, I'm afraid. Please step back and examine your line of argument here. You're making unfavored claims based on what you call 'reason' and seem unwilling to consider contrary evidence.
It's fine to have a contrary opinion, but please refrain from spreading misinformation if you don't care to engage with the topic at hand.
Can you think for yourself without authorities, man? I know it's hard.
This passage from the Economist article I think nicely, and unintentionally, demonstrates the level of insanity here:
The result was that some 20,000 convicts who otherwise would have been sent to prison remained free. The state incarceration rate reverted to 1990s levels without an attending rise. Indeed, studies found no effect on violent crime and a small effect on property crime. (Each year of prison not served due to California's reform was estimated to cause an additional 1.2 auto thefts.) However, the social cost of a stolen Corolla is not clearly greater than the cost to taxpayers of a year of prison time.
So, 20,000 innocent people per year have their cars stolen. But no biggie! Without plutonium, how would we have electricity? If someone steals 1.2 cars per year, why lock him up? It's not worth the cost of a "Corolla."
The result is the insane predatory atmosphere of a normal American (for me, SF) street, in which anyone with any sense is on yellow alert all the time except behind locked doors. As for my children, I'm resigned to being a helicopter parent until they're old enough to... defend themselves, I guess? Should probably start with those karate lessons now.
Meanwhile, in Japan, which has zero tolerance for crime, you can send your five-year-old around the corner to buy milk. Have you ever lived in a crime-free society? Even visited? Try it sometime -- the feeling is downright amazing. You really don't know what you're missing.
I was sent to buy milk when I was seven. I had to walk several blocks to do it. I never suffered any crime, and actually, I was walking through a slightly worse neighborhood than I lived in to get to the convenience store.
Even most criminals don't attack children. Stop propagandizing in this thread.
That wasn't an appeal to authority, just an appeal to reason.
You'll have to forgive me if I prefer to trust Dr. Pryor and common sense over the Brookings Institution's "studies and accidental experiments."
If people were fruit flies and it was possible to actually conduct controlled experiments in "social science," I'd be happy to take their results seriously. Or more to the point, if controlled experiments were possible, no one would take uncontrolled experiments seriously (not to mention studies by the Brookings Institution, with its very large axe to grind -- see the Moskos commentaries on Brookings research linked above).
But the definition of science isn't "the best we can do." When actual science isn't physically practical, "the best we can do" is not science but pseudoscience. Fortunately, there are other ways to use our brains.
What you refer to is called the 'incapacitation' effect, and studies and certain accidental experiments suggest the effect isn't that big: http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2015/07/cr...