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Desrtopa comments on Open Thread, September 23-29, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: Mestroyer 24 September 2013 01:25AM

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Comment author: Desrtopa 01 October 2013 04:58:52PM *  3 points [-]

On the other hand, making people spend long periods of time in a low-trust environment surrounded by criminals seems to be a rather effective way of elevating recidivism when they do get out, so the advantage as implemented in our system is on rather tenuous footing.

And of course, the prison system comes with the major disadvantage that imprisoning people is a highly expensive punishment to implement.

Comment author: Lumifer 01 October 2013 05:21:50PM 2 points [-]

I am not arguing that prisons are the proper way to deal with crime. All I'm saying is that arguments in favor of imprisonment as the preferred method of punishing criminals exist.