[swearwolf]

1.) Though this is becoming an increasingly popular viewpoint in many of the American cities that are experiencing these problems right now, it’s far from universally held.

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.

[wing-_-nuts]

I consider myself a liberal, but while I think pretty much all drug possession charges should be dropped and decriminalized, violent crime? Robbery? Those folks should absolutely be in jail. I don't care if we have to build tent cities to incarcerate them. You hurt someone intentionally, you should not be breathing free air for a while.

[bluescrn]

The problem area seems to be property crime without direct violence.

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?

[bee_rider]

It should also be noted that locking people up puts them in contact with a bunch of convicted criminals. Making weed illegal put a bunch of otherwise harmless people in a situation where they wanted to do illegal business.

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).

[mindslight]

The fundamental problem is that the misguided attempt to criminalize drugs destroyed respect for the law for generations. Once you're at risk of being locked in a cage for decades for engaging in behavior that would otherwise just be called running a small business, then robbery isn't a huge leap. Especially after your industry ends up creating its own parallel justice system because the usual courts have been made unavailable.

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 actual law and order by the very people fallaciously rallying behind "law and order" in the 80's and 90's.

[EliRivers]

You hurt someone intentionally, you should not be breathing free air for a while.

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.

[lesuorac]

Prison is where criminals go. Jail is where people not convicted of a crime go.

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...