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Originally Posted by milo
I pretty much took it to be something else, putting people in prison doesn't stop the law from being broken, it only prevents those that are in prison from breaking the law. Assuming theres a degree of rationality involved, after one iteration id say 'prison hasn't reduced crime'. I don't think a certain percentage of a population is born to commit crime, and hence a certain percentage need to be detained in order to reduce it; rather the laws imposed by society are wrong or its opportunities insuffecient.
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I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Could you be a bit more coherent?
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Originally Posted by milo
If you're talking about crime in any other sense than the act of an individual, i don't see how you can say 'prisons reduce crime'. If they did, they'd have eliminated it along time ago.
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That's what crime is, though - a series of acts perpetrated by individuals (or groups) that are against the law. If there are fewer illegal acts, we say "crime is reduced", but we could equally say "the number of crimes committed has gone down". Crime isn't some black cloud floating around our streets taking control of people and forcing them to do evil.