[luplex]

The US is probably more violent than other western countries, but I think the real problem are the much harsher sentences for comparable crimes (citation needed).

There's much more of a focus on punishment instead of reintegration. The legality of the death sentence is a clear violation of human rights, for example.

I haven't encountered evidence that would suggest that the US is better at preventing crime than others.

[donkeyd]

> There's much more of a focus on punishment instead of reintegration.

Yup, this is a cultural thing. In the US, people (in general) want criminals to be punished, they don't put too much value in rehabilitation. It's very different from many European countries which is visible in sentencing.

> I haven't encountered evidence that would suggest that the US is better at preventing crime than others.

On the contrary, there's much more crime in the US than most western countries. Whether this has anything to do with punishment vs rehabilitation is impossible to say though. I personally think that lack of many social services is more to blame. Things like social security, public housing mixed with private, health care, workers rights, et cetera mean less people end up in criminality in the first place.

Recidivism rates unfortunately are extremely hard to compare due to the methods and sentencing being extremely different.

[hnbad]

"There's more crime" is a meaingless claim unless you define what "crime" is and how you measure how much there is of it. Jaywalking is a crime in some countries. Does a country that criminalizes jaywalking have more crime than one that doesn't if it has any people jaywalking? How do you measure crime which is underreported or not enforced consistently?

If the US has a higher incarceration rate it's extremely likely that it has "more crime" because incarceration is supposed to be a punishment for doing crimes. The question is how the definition of those crimes compares to other countries. E.g. do you consider possession of cannabis a crime because it is illegal on a federal level? Former US President Bill Clinton used cannabis before it was legalized in any US state, so was that a crime?

For a real world case of this nebulous concept of "crime" as an opaque quantity consider immigration: even if they commit fewer violent crimes, it's still entirely possible for an immigrant to be more prone to crime simply because they are subject to additional legal requirements citizens aren't and failing to comply with any of them may qualify as a criminal offense. Just by their legal status they are able to commit an entire category of crimes others can't. Whether you think that is justified or not, they can literally be criminals for behaving exactly the same way as a non-criminal citizen would.

[int0x2e]

You might be interested in listening/reading a recent Planet Money episode (https://www.npr.org/2022/09/22/1124477182/federal-judges-eco...), which explains how for ~20 years or so, many US federal court justices went to an exclusive, all expense paid economics bootcamp, taught by some of the most well known economics thinkers of the time. That sure sounds great in theory - why wouldn't you want to have judges to have a deeper understanding of economics when they can have impact on financial matters?

Well, as it turns out, some of the key ideas taught focused on the rational economic theory, and extrapolated from there to crime and punishment - e.g.: a criminal makes a cold economic calculation before commit each crime, taking into account the expected gain from this crime, the likelihood of getting caught, the expected punishment if caught, etc. - and therefor, if we make the "cost" higher, by opting for harsher prison sentences - crime will become less attractive and therefore happen less.

When the data is analyzed, justices that went through this program appear to hand out harsher sentences to offenders, and often rule in favor of corporations and against government agencies when compared to the control group. The effect is most evident for judges that used to learn more to the liberal side, which is surprising to me, but it definitely is interesting.

[_trampeltier]

Also, I think after jail, you are not allowed to vote in most us states. Also to get a job after jail seems almost impossible in the us.

[sokoloff]

Voting is conditioned on not being a convicted felon in some states.

https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/felon-...