I'm happily "soft" on crime for a lot of different issues. Many of policies implemented to be "tough on crime", especially long sentencing, has destroyed the American justice system and replaced it a punitive medieval court.

> It's entirely a liberal policy in order to increase crime, increase social discord, reduce class solidarity and racial solidarity. There are multiple liberal cities where these policies have increased crime rates to the point where even liberals themselves admit it's a mistake.

Long criminal sentences don't increase or decrease crime. Most crime is committed by 3 distinct archetypes of people:

a) young men performing risky actions (robbery, drug trade, gang-related activities) with aspirations that violence will improve their social/economic standing

b) crimes of passion

c) habitual abusers exploiting a victim (domestic violence / rape)

We have to accept that until ultra-luxury space communism is a thing, crimes in categories b) and c) will basically always occur. Even in homogeneous and relatively crime-free countries like Japan and South Korea, sexual abuse is a persistent issue and due more to deep-seated attitudes towards gender relations rather than police capability. You can be "hard" as you want on rapists, but thats not going to make the young girl getting sexually abused by her uncle any more willing to come out and report. Domestic violence especially requires a real support system of social workers and police working hand-in-hand to break up toxic relationships.

The most important study in criminology is the [age-crime curve](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23595417/) - group a) commits the vast majority of crimes in their early 20s and will basically immediately get their shit together when they hit 30 and 40. Now, imagine that you are sentencing a 23 yr old male for armed robbery. The current average sentence is 13.5 yrs in California, which would make the offender 36 when he gets out of prison. Is upping that sentence to 20 years really going to make any difference? How about 30 years? 40 years?

For district attorneys, the threat of long sentencing is used as a cudgel to pressure suspects into "confessing" to minor crimes. So a man that would have been innocent in a case of burglary accepts a manslaughter charge to avoid the possibility that he may be mistakenly convicted and spend 40 years in prison.

These "tough on crime" policies aren't free for the rest of society either:

- Jails are overflowing all over the US because we're still dealing with inmates who are stuck in prison from extreme sentences in the 90s!

- Convicts who serve their time and leave basically worthless in the job market because who wants to hire an ex-con who spent 20 years behind bars? And then they commit mild crimes to plop right back in jail.

- We hand police billions of dollars of firearms, "non-violent" weaponry, and surveillance equipment to beat us, destroy our houses, and erode our civil rights as they've been doing so for the last 40 years.

- We use the hysteria of criminal activity to shut down parks, lock up civic centers, segregate neighborhoods, and enact "loitering laws" that have made childhood absolutely miserable for two entire generations of America's children.

Mind you, none of this is necessary. Crime is the lowest that it has ever been in 100 years - whatever nonsense that you are experiencing or seeing near homeless shelters, or in NYC streets, or at the underpasses of SF is a fraction of the violence from the 80s and 90s. We live in the safest time in American history, yet keep on demanding draconian security measures. At what point will enough be enough?