This encapsulates everything that is wrong with this 'society'.

The Corinthian wrote: »

I completely agree, which is why I asked as to the better alternative. If better no alternative (and "could be policing strategies, they could be social strategies" is an vague aspiration, not an alternative) is available, then you're left with taking the best available one, which is that of imposing custodial sentences.

But you have done nothing to demonstrate that is is the best available one; you just seem to assume that it is. Yet as we both agree that prison is a massively expensive way of achieving very little, and that locking up one criminal may simply create a gap which another one will fill. Given that, it's not very likely that the strategy of more and longer imprisonment will in general turn out to be "the best available one". And in this particular case, where the underlying problem is heroin addiction, the notion that lengthy prisons sentences are the most cost-effective way of reducing heroin-addiction-driven crime seems to fly in the fact of common sense and common experience. Heroin addicts are not that responsive to concerns about prison sentences.

The Corinthian wrote: »

Problem is there is no single reason or group of reasons why crimes are committed in the first place. Correlations exist, but even if we address those the problem won't go away and we will still need a means to deal with those. Or are you suggesting that a solution is possible that will lead us to a golden age where no one will ever break the law? If so, I'm all ears

You're setting the standard a little high there, Corinthian. Non-custodial policy doesn't have to result in zero crime to be the best option; it just has to result in less crime than a similar expenditure on custodial policy is likely to give us. And since we know that increasing sentences does little to reduce crime rates, the odds are looking pretty good.

Note that I'm not saying that there is no need for, or place for, custodial sentences. I'm responding to the knee-jerk assumption manifested earlier in this thread that if we have unacceptably high crime rates the proper or best response is more and longer sentences of imprisonment. There are other possible responses to rising crime rates; most of them cost less than prison and offer a fair prospect of producing the same or a better reduction in crime rates, given that longer sentences produces virtually no reduction. It's far more likely that the vast resources consumed by the prison policy mean that we're not trying more effective policies than the other way around.

Actually, Corinthian, I don't think either of us have done much to prove our respective contentions.

You keep saying that "custodial sentences are the best of a bad lot", but you don't have any evidence for that. You can say that at least sending this bloke to prison stops him from (most) offending for as long as he's in prison. On the other hand, it does nothing to prevent any other bloke from committing the crimes that, if not imprisoned, he would have committed, and if the factors that led him into crime have not altered (and the prison policy does nothing to alter them) then our expectation should be that, on the whole, some other bloke probably will commit those crimes. So what you have identified is a very limited benefit, and you have nothing to suggest that it represents a better outcome than anything you could hope to achieve if you had devoted the same resources to some different strategy. The outcome you identify may be the best outcome that any strategy could achieve, but you have no basis for asserting or assuming that it is. it could be the worst. Or somewhere in the middle.

Conversely, I've got nothing to show that devoting the same resources to another strategy would produce a better outcome. I think we have grounds for a fair degree of optimism that it would - viz, the cost of prison is so high, and the benefit in terms of crime reduction so limited, that it's a real counsel of despair to suggest that no alternative strategy that we might devise could possibly produce a better outcome - but actual evidence? Nope.

I'd agree with you, incidentally, that there are not better options for all cases. Sometimes a custodial sentence will be the best option. I really came into the thread, though, in response to the case in the OP, and Hotblack's suggestion that since custody wasn't preventing crimes, the proper response was longer and longer custodial sentences. I would have thought that the case in the OP - crimes committed habitually by heroin addicts - is almost the textbook example of a crime problem which is demonstrably not effectively tackled with custodial sentences, and that spending more and more money on a very expensive policy not expected to work and demonstrably not working in practice was not a proper, or even a rational, response. Unless you are going to imprison all heroin addicts before they have committed any crimes (even if that were possible or morally acceptable) custodial policy is never going to prevent heroin addicts from committing crimes. Money spent tackling the causes and consequences of heroin addiction is almost certainly going to yield better returns, in terms of crime reduction, than longer and longer sentences for addicts who have already committed crimes.

Or, at least, I have a strong sense that this is so. But no actual evidence!

The Corinthian wrote: »

With all due respect, I do think the onus is on you to show evidence that better options exist, rather than I having to prove they don't.

With even more grovelling respect, Cor, if you assert -as you have repeatedly done - that imprisonment is the best of the not very good options available, I think the onus is on you to show that it is the best.

Your claim is actually more extravagant than mine. You are saying that, of all the options available, this one is the best. I am saying that, of all the options available, at least one of the others is better than this. In the absence of any evidence at all, the smart money will be on me; the odds favour me. In the absence of evidence, we are identifying the best policy att random, or because it appeals to our preconceptions. But, using this method, you have to hit the bull's-eye to win, and identify the best policy; I win if I hit the dartboard anywhere at all, so to speak.

I'd go a bit further than that; I have at least offered reasons for thinking that, in this particular case, the imprisonment option is unlikely to achieve much, if anything, in crime prevention terms, and you haven't really quibbled with anything I have said about that; in fact you have a agreed with it. So your position is that a policy which will admittedly achieve little or nothing is, nevertheless, the best policy. Even if you have no evidence to support this belief, you could at least offer an account of why you hold it.

Torakx wrote: »

Imprisonment with options to work it off through community service, might be a middle ground, a way to transition to a more productive and positive social engagement with society, for re-integration and rehabilitation.

I don't actually know what the fuss is about here.

There is plenty "non" penal options granted to criminals depending on the crime and indeed plenty rehab programmes but inside and outside prison.

If however a person doesn't interact or take part in whatever supports and services the state tries to help them with on a consistent basis, and they continue to re-offend there is no alternative for society but to lock them up for longer periods to keep themselves and the remainder of society safe.
The guy above is a persistent re-offender despite being granted leniency and supports by the state.