If this worked then the USA, with the longest sentences and by far the largest prison population in the developed world, wouldn't still have by far the worst violent crime. If this worked then Black communities would be the safest places in the country, seeing as Black "criminals" are incarcerated at a FAR higher rate and for MUCH longer than men in any other community. Yet the exact opposite is true.
Criminologists have found that increasing the # of people who are incarcerated only reduces crime up to a breaking point of about 2%. Past that point, the more people who are incarcerated, the WORST crime gets, because constantly removing so many men from the community fukks with the very fabric of the society. It normalizes prison as "the place young men go and old men come back from", it normalizes prison as "the place where fathers are", it degrades the community's trust in the legal system and acceptance with how much any particular criminal deserves to be there because it feels like everyone is getting sent there. Not to mention that the cost of keeping people in prison is fukking enormous and diverts funds that could be used to improve societal problems rather than just try to lock the problems away without even addressing the root cause.
Having the rule of law, the general societal implication that crime is a true concern and criminals will get caught, is important. Having prison sentences long enough to act as an actual deterrent is important. Having a prison system that actually improves a person and makes them less of a criminal rather than more than one is important. Being able to determine when someone is ready to be released back into society is important. And all of those aims are hampered by creating arbitrarily long prison sentences that overburden the system long past the point where that particular person is still a threat.
How many murders do actual long prison sentences save? In Australia they did a recidivism study of 1088 released murderers over 22 years. Over half of them were eventually arrested for some other offense, which is not entirely surprising considering their backgrounds and the high chance they were in a difficult social and economic space when released. However, only 3 of the 1088 were ever re-arrested for murder. And this study started back in the 1980s when murder rates were higher and prison rehabilitation programs were shyt.
So you poisoned the well with an emotion-based appeal and are surprised it didn't get a response?
Payton Gendron may well be past the point of rehabilitation. I don't think anyone can answer that question for a long time. Many (other) people would have put Assata Shakur or Malcolm X or Michael Jackson in the same category, in each case for different reasons. The lines are very different for different people. Since we already have a system that incarcerates virtually every offense as long or longer than virtually everywhere else, why the need to push things even further in a directly that hasn't apparently helped?
