1157 Incarceration

Societies require punishment because sociopaths, 4% of any population, will act against other people’s interests unless the risk is greater than the reward; and psychopaths, 1% of the population, are criminals because they enjoy it. Incarceration, a liberal concept, is the ultimate threat since executions are negligible, and obviously it’s exercised a lot if the amount of prisoners in America is the measure: over 2 million; the highest per capita in the world; yet it’s hard to get a prosecutor to take a case unless it’s a slam dunk because they don’t want to lower their conviction rate, and attorneys aren’t interested in convicting innocent people, no matter how much they’re paid. The simple reason America has more prisoners is because we prosecute more guilty people; the side-effect of an effective judiciary. Unfortunately, overall, it’s unclear that warehousing criminals is beneficial to society: prisons & jails are overflowing, and over a third of all prisoners are Black. Serving time has even become a symbol of legitimacy & honor for some segments of the population, making prisons the equivalent to a university education. The impact this has locally is devastating because few of their youth escape the lifestyle. The destruction of some communities is so complete, their citizens would rather have no police at all rather than continue incarcerating so many of their own.