[pfedor]

dmm's point was made by several people in the comments thread for the very article you cite, some of them quoting statistics: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3691372

tl;dr: In the U.S. in only 20% of murder cases the perpetrator is found and convicted of murder, compared with (allegedly) 90% in Japan. At the same time, even if all non-violent offenders (that includes all drug offenses) were released from prisons in the U.S. tomorrow, the U.S. would still have double the incarceration rate of Western Europe.

I don't know enough to have an opinion either way, but intuitively this message has a true ring to it: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3696583

[vacri]

Going from 7 times Europe's rate to double Europe's rate is still pretty significant.

On your second link, the first half is reasonable, but the second half utterly misses the point. The reason why the police wait in 'The Wire' and in real life is because they're gathering evidence. If they don't have enough evidence, the case won't stick. Similarly, they're trying to catch the kingpins. If you catch the front-line dudes you can fill your prisons with them, but there will always be more (in places where it's bad, like where the Wire is set).

It's weird that given the US already has such an immense problem with overincarceration that you think the solution is to lock people up over even more trivial issues. Where are those people going to be stored? Given the already clogged courts, aren't you going to have to abandon due process in order to get so many through?

[3143]

You still haven't shown that overincarceration is actually a problem in any meaningful sense. The solution could just as easily be to open more courts.

[vacri]

There already is too little money for courts (and the prisons the subsequent influx of prisoners are going to need), so where is it going to come from?

It's pointless, really, because if you honestly don't think that overincarceration is 'actually a problem', then you're so one-eyed that nothing I say will sway you.

[3143]

There are stories all the time about prisons being run for profit. If the prison industry is profitable, perhaps it can be made profitable enough to pay for more courts as well. More prisons would of course be a net gain rather than a loss.

[vacri]

Who is it that you think pays for the prisons that are profitable? Who is their customer?

I mean, you're saying here that somehow the state would get more money back from the private prisons than they paid them, so they could spend this surplus on courts?

[3143]

I have no idea. If the state is the customer, who is running the prisons? (And why are prisons allowed to be run by a non-state entity?)