Here, I’ll post a nice thing about conservatives:
They’re right about criminal sentencing. For the wrong reasons, of course; for visceral, hateful reasons. But they’re right anyway.
An orderly society requires respect for the law. That means criminal sentencing can’t just consider the “optimal outcome” of rehabilitation, the feelings of the victims, or even deterring similar future crimes. The most important thing is sending a message to the public that Justice Has Been Done; that the system has satisfactorily dealt with the problem. If people view the justice system as unfair, ineffective, or capricious, they learn contempt for it and then eventually society falls apart.
Quick joke break: “Oh you say you hate the police, but if someone breaks into your house who else are you gonna call to show up three hours later and take notes that nobody ever follows up on?”
So rehabilitative sentencing is the Big Thing at the moment. It’s evidence based to reduce recidivism, and it’s certainly the best outcome for the criminal. But these sentences are also radically lenient compared to the expectations of the public. Take notorious rapist Brock Turner, for example: his sentence was probably within guidelines for rehabilitation, but the sentence was also orders of magnitude lower than the public expected. Massive public outrage followed, eventually leading to the judges recall. The California Commission on Judicial Performance deepened the resulting contempt by reviewing the case and insisting the judge ruled appropriately (which he did, for a dubious value of appropriateness). And facts aside, now there’s an entire generation of people who will remember for the rest of their lives that, basically, the US criminal justice system lets rich white boy athletes get away with rape.
What does contempt for the criminal justice system look like? Maybe the next time someone finds the next Brock Turner in an alley, they don’t bother calling the police. They just take care of the problem themselves, because they know the justice system won’t. Is a society like that really better than letting a criminal rot for longer than ‘necessary’?