We've tried it your way for decades - where prisons are permanent storage for badly made humans - and it doesn't work. They fill up, cost the taxpayer and become yet another thing to exploit. Society looks the other way whilst they get mistreated. Obscenities like rape are constant grim realities of such facilities, and organizations like gangs thrive in them too. Recidivism rates are alarming to boot.
The point of prisons, which Americans consistently fail to grasp, given their penchant for cruelty and selfishness, is reform.
That's what "our responsibility" means. We need to take these broken people and try to rebuild them, because they, their parents and society failed them the first time. Not all of them can be helped, but not to try produces what we have now, which is an abomination.
In reality no one has "tried it my way", you have made the assumption I agree with the current prison system, I dont.
I also do not agree that the "reform" we need is simply letting criminals go who commit property crime, or because of the socio/econimic circumstance, or any of the other "liberal" or "left" visions of reform
Today's system is centered around punishment, not protection of society, or reforming people, etc. It is just punishment. The criminal owes a "debt to society". I disagree with this model.
There is a whole host of reforms I would support both to prisons, and to criminal justice over all. However simply refusing to prosecute shoplifting, or other "minor" property crimes is not one I can support.
You're making non-points. California has not effectively deployed various progressive policies. There exists certain people who are intractably violent or cruel and who cannot be healed or changed with the cutting edge of therapy or medicine.
So what?
This knowledge is not a sufficient excuse to give up on the problem. The status quo is unacceptable. That's the key fact.
These are acts that are not aligned with the topic of reformation of prisoners. Critique of claimed progressive acts (acts done by self proclaimed progressives vs those acts aligned with formalized progressive ideology) is irrelevant. If you just want to dump rhetoric, you can make a new submission for that.
The point of prisons, which Americans consistently fail to grasp, given their penchant for cruelty and selfishness, is reform.
That's what "our responsibility" means. We need to take these broken people and try to rebuild them, because they, their parents and society failed them the first time. Not all of them can be helped, but not to try produces what we have now, which is an abomination.