[csense]

I agree that current prison sentences are too high, many drug offenders don't belong in prison, current plea bargaining practices make a mockery of the very idea of justice by essentially turning a criminal prosecution into a game of high-stakes poker, and it is currently far too difficult for convicts who have served their sentences to reintegrate into society in a positive way.

But your analysis leaves out the idea of deterrence.

Heavy consequences for serious violent crimes like rape, murder, assault, etc. keep those violent crimes from being seen as viable options for resolving disputes by people who have self-interest but little-to-no empathy or ethics.

A free democracy with a prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, can't really do much to criminals other than attempt to rehabilitate them, lock them up, or punish them financially [1]. Enduring sentences of rehabilitation and financial punishments are probably things that a rational, self-interested sociopath would be willing to endure as the price of being allowed to maim or murder someone who gets in the way of what they want. OTOH the prospect losing a few decades to prison, would probably convince our hypothetical sociopath to try to find a lawful way to deal with their situation.

[1] The death penalty is an interesting and complex topic, and I think the consensus is slowly moving toward ending the death penalty. My view is that it obviously does nothing for rehabilitation, it's not cost-effective at keeping criminals off the streets (it's less expensive to imprison a defendant for life than to do all the legal maneuvering courts and legislatures have found necessary to properly protect the rights of the accused), and its deterrence value is not that great (because it's so expensive, relatively few cases go through the process, and it takes a long time, so the additional deterrence provided versus a life prison sentence is questionable at best). Since life imprisonment does a better job of satisfying those three main objectives of criminal penalties, it should be preferred.

In other words, the death penalty either has to get a lot faster, cheaper, and much more widely applied, or we need to give it up entirely. I think the first path is a political non-starter and fraught with constitutional issues, making the second path the only real way forward.

[gcd]

I agree - I certainly did leave that out. I still think we need to have consequences for crimes with victims, especially violent ones. But that's still only part of the equation: we need to have deterrences and corrections in the same way that there's preventative medicine and treatment.

Even for violent crimes, I don't think that locking people up should be the only response. Victim-centered approaches, like restorative justice circles for example, could and should be used more where applicable. The victim is mostly left out of the equation in our current justice system. We should also try to view instances of violence not as deliberate evil actions taken by people, but instead culminations of bad circumstances and bad choices. This is not to say there shouldn't be repercussions for the bad choices, but we should also offer support and rehabilitation to try to improve the circumstances.

Of course, there will always be the people who are beyond rehabilitation. Even then, for these kinds of people, 'prison' doesn't sound quite right to me.. 'mental institution' seems more appropriate.

On [1], I don't support the death penalty because there are so many errors made in sentencing. Even if we managed to make the error rate much lower, I personally don't think the cost of innocent lives would be worth the potential extra deterrence the threat of death provides over life imprisonment. Hell, even if the rate were 0%, I still wouldn't support it for moral reasons.