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handoflixue comments on Crime and punishment - Less Wrong
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I meant that you wouldn't like to be among the 1% in current prisons, rather than any number of better-structured alternatives. Given the various studies of and statistics on the current system, it doesn't seem likely that this is the best we can do.
It can be, but I think that ignores the effects, psychological and otherwise, that current prisons seem to have on inmates. It seems like the system tends to encourage recidivism. Longer terms in an otherwise-unchanged system would be unlikely to accomplish professed goals better than larger reforms could.
A sufficiently long term (i.e. life sentence) does guarantee a ~0% recidivism rate. There are obviously other factors to consider, but if the primary goal is simply to reduce recidivism, longer sentences do have the benefit of simply reducing opportunities to commit a second (or third, or fourth...) crime.
I personally feel that this would be a terrible solution, especially given the financial costs involved. I'd argue that the goal is to make society safe at the lowest cost, since the saved costs can then (presumably) be spent on something that further helps society.
This suggests wide application of death penalty as an attractive option. Historically, English law took this approach, prescribing death penalty even for petty theft and similar offenses that would nowadays be seen as not too serious. (This changed with a series of reforms in the first half of the 19th century.)
Of course, the problem with death penalty is the irreversibility of the punishment in case of wrong conviction, and also that it gives criminals the incentive to murder at will once they've already done something that draws the death penalty (and to fight like cornered rats when being captured). However, my impression is that the old English system worked pretty well.
(Also, the problem with the death penalty as practiced in modern-day U.S. is that the amount of time and effort involved in the bureaucratic work that is necessary to execute someone is so vast that it ends up being more expensive than life imprisonment in practice. But this could of course be easily changed given the political will to do so.)
Your own comment seems to suggest that the cost of the death penalty is excessive: It reduces safety by causing innocent people to die, it reduces safety by making those criminals have nothing left to fear (and probably building a fair bit of resentment), it's expensive due to bureaucratic practices, and it's expensive because you lose all the resources invested in to that individual with no chance of redeeming them in to a productive member of society.
So, I suppose we're in agreement that it's not actually a practical solution for either the goal of safety or finances, even if some people might assume it is? :)