> The US legal system throws more people in jail than in any other
> country of the world, yet the US crime rates are some of the
> highest too. So harsh punishments don't work.
As has been pointed out, most of them are there for victimless crimes.
As to whether harsh punishments work to deter _real_ crimes, e.g. murder,
rape, robbery, have a look at Singapore. Everyone I've ever talked to who
has been there says you can feel almost perfectly safe anywhere, any time,
provided only that you're not chewing gum or smoking a hoota.
I think one reason the Fe'ral gummit has pushed so hard to get more people
in prison is to hide our real unemployment numbers. The process is twofold.
Firstly, the prison industrial complex is a works program, providing jobs
for prison employees and for people building and maintaining prisons.
But more importantly, people in prison don't get counted in "official"
unemployment statistics. This is something you'll never hear the media talk
about: Every time Big Brother locks up an unemployed person, the
unemployment rate decreases by one. Moreover, every time Big Brother locks
up an employed person, somebody still has to do that person's job. Maybe
that somebody is a previously unemployed person, or maybe it's an employed
person who jumps jobs--but in that case he may need to be replaced, and so
on and so forth. So even locking up a person who has a job will sometimes
decrease the unemployment rate by one.
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